1849 Greenleaf Map of Australia and New Zealand

This is Jeremiah Greenleaf's 1849 map of Australia and New Zealand. This map features numerous minor updates over earlier editions reflecting the rapid exploration of the Australian interior between 1835 and 1849.

A Closer Look

The map follows the 1835 David H. Burr map of the same region - but with significant updates. Although coverage is focused on Australia, it extends to include New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and southern New Zealand. A red line through the center of Australia at 135° East Longitude separates New Holland from New South Wales (see below). Port Phillip, Melbourne, and Hobart Town are noted, along with a host of settlements spreading outward from Sydney. In Western Australia, we see Freemantle and the Swan River Colony.

The Division of Australia

The division of Australia on the 135th East Meridian dates to 1786 when Captain Arthur Phillip received two commissions as governor of New South Wales. The line references the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, a Papal Bull that divided the world between Portugal and Spain. The Bull established a Meridian at 360 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands - a point considered to be roughly the center of the Atlantic. This gave Portugal control over Brazil and routes around Africa, and Spain control over most of the Americas. The Tordesillas Treaty, however, assumed a flat Earth (scholars knew this was not so, but the church…). Magellan's circumnavigation (1519 - 1522) led to the establishment of an anti-Meridian in the Pacific. While there was some dispute between Spain and Portugal where the anti-Meridian ran, it was eventually settled at 135° East Longitude.

In 1644, the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman named the western half of the continent New Holland, leaving the eastern half unexplored but within the historic dominion of Spain. The decision was tactful, as it seized nominal control of Western Australia from Portugal, while not offending Spain, which then had suzerainty over Holland. In 1770, Captain James Cook mapped and claimed the unexplored eastern part of Australia for Great Britain.

Eighteen years later, in 1788, the British established the penal colony of New South Wales under Captain Arthur Phillip. Phillip's charter specifically set the colony's western border along the old Tordesillas anti-Meridian, 135°E. This, it has been noted, was to avoid conflict with Holland, which at the time, England was actively recruiting into the 1788 Triple Alliance as a buffer against the French. First Fleet officer Watkin Tench (1758 - 1833) subsequently commented in A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay, 'By this partition, it may be fairly presumed, that every source of future litigation between the Dutch and us, will be forever cut off, as the discoveries of English navigators only are comprised in this territory.'

Publication History and Census

This map is the later Greenleaf issue of the David Hugh Burr / Illman map of 1835. The Burr map plates fell into the hands of Jeremiah Greenleaf, who revised them for publication in his own Universal Atlas. The present example is from the 1849 edition of the atlas, the last and final, which was extensively revised over the 1848. We note an example in the David Rumsey collection, which has been populated digitally throughout OCLC, making a comprehensive survey of existing physical examples nearly impossible. Nonetheless, the 1849 edition of the atlas is rare, which Rumsey correctly notes is not in Karpinski. We do note an example, however, in Phillips.