1630 / 1638 Jansson Map of the East Indies: landmark in Australia and Philippine Geography

This is a gorgeous, original color example of Jan Jansson's 1630 map of the East Indies - the first printed map to present Willem Janszoon's European 1606 contact with Australia. It also represents a milestone in the mapping of the Philippines, containing a markedly more precise depiction of the archipelago than any prior printed map.

A Closer Look

The map reaches from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the Marianas (Insulae de Ladrones) and from southern China south beyond Java and Timor, thus embracing modern-day Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, as well as providing a glimpse of the first documented European contact with Australia at York Peninsula.

The map is a classic of Dutch decorative cartography, sporting ships, a sea monster, fine compass roses, and elegant cartouches. The scale cartouche is flanked by a merman and a mermaid, and the title cartouche features indigenous warriors.

First Dutch Glimpses of Australia

The southeastern quarter of the map is rich in new exploration. An elongated north coastline appears for New Guinea: this, and the islands north of it, derive from the ill-fated voyage of Le Maire and Schouten, as transmitted by Joris Spilbergen (1568 - 1620). To the south, the islands spanning from Java Maior and Bali eastwards appear in greater detail than on any earlier printed work. Lombok and the Lesser Sunda Islands have only their north coasts charted, suggesting reports from an unknown voyage touching those coastlines. Following these islands eastwards, the chain turns upwards to the southern coastline of an island not appearing on earlier printed works at all: Duyfkens Eylant, whose blank northern coasts face the blank southern coasts of t' Landt vande Papuos, or New Guinea. Even further east appear more incomplete coastlines, with the placenames Modder Eylandt and Tyuri.

These latter details are derived from Willem Janszoon's 1606 voyage on the pinnace Duyfken. Janszoon's Duyfkens Eylant proved to be southwestern New Guinea, and he supposed that the coastline of Modder Eylandt might connect. That discovery would prove momentous: this was not part of New Guinea but was instead the western coast of Australia's Cape York Peninsula. While Janszoon's report spurred further exploration, it was not committed to any prior printed map. His 1606 discoveries were not publicized at the time, nor were they coherently synthesized with other East India discoveries. His journal and chart were lost, although reports of these discoveries would spread, being mentioned in Dutch documents as early as 1618.

The earliest appearance of this cartography is on the 1622 Hessel Gerritsz manuscript map Mar del Sur, produced when Gerritsz was the Official Hydrographer to the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Scrutiny of this work reveals it to be the clear precursor to Jansson's map from Borneo eastwards.

A Landmark in the Mapping of the Philippines

Jansson's map also benefits from Gerritsz in its sophisticated depiction of the Philippine Archipelago, appearing in print here for the first time. European printed maps of the Philippines in the first part of the 17th century were overwhelmingly derived from Jan van Linschoten. Even the 1619 De Bry map - produced to accompany Joris van Spilbergen's account of his circumnavigation - did not materially improve Philippine geography. This was likely the result of protections the VOC maintained until 1619, strictly controlling the dissemination of new information relating to their sphere of operation. In that context, the depiction of the Philippines found on the present map appears out of nowhere.

Gerritsz's geography does, however, reintroduce an error that had appeared fleetingly on some earlier maps: the phantom island of St. Juan, on the northeast coast of Mindanao. It appeared first on Ortelius' 1570 map of Asia, only to disappear on Linschoten's map of the region, and those maps descended from it. Lacking Gerritsz's sources, we cannot know why the official hydrographer to the VOC would include the island on his manuscript. But on the strength of Gerritsz's work, the island appears not only on Jansson's 1630 map but on the 1635 Blaeu and subsequent maps by Dudley, Goos, Moll, and others. Dampier in 1697 even described the island's inhabitants, flora and fauna, so certain was he of the island's existence. Velarde's famous and authoritative 1734 map eliminated the phantom island, and this might have been expected to settle the issue: indeed, many cartographers followed Velarde's model. Nevertheless, the island survived the eighteenth century in many works, including such lights as the French Bellin in 1752, and the British Laurie and Whittle in 1794. Glimpses appear even as late as 1855.

VOC Privileges and the Spread of East India Knowledge

Through its peak period of activity, the VOC enforced restricted privileges on the publication and dissemination of their charts. When Hessel Gerritsz became the official chartmaker for the company in 1618, he requested and received the same protections. In 1619, the VOC claimed company ownership of Gerritsz's privileges in return for a stable salaried position. At the same time, earlier privileges - Gerritsz's and Linschoten's for example - were withdrawn. So while charts after 1619 had strict protections, earlier, formerly protected work became free game.

This may explain both the sudden appearance of new matter on Jansson's map and also its limits. The 1606 Janszoon cartography, as well as the Spilbergen / Le Maire / Schouten data, all fell before the 1619 cutoff. The more current 1628 Australian discoveries by Captain Gerrit Frederikszoon de Witt do not appear. Another telling lacuna on Jansson's map is Amboyna, a key spice island, and former VOC headquarters in the Indies. While the island is named in the 1622 Gerritsz manuscript, the placename is omitted here. It reappeared on the 1634 Blaeu. The nearby English settlement of Cambello is also named, despite having been destroyed by the Dutch in 1623.

Keeping Up with Competition

In 1629, Jodocus Hondius sold 30 of his copperplates to his competitor Blaeu: an act his heirs would come to rue, as Blaeu immediately replaced the imprints of those maps with his own and published them in his Appendix. The younger Hondius and his brother-in-law Jansson set about replacing the lost plates, both with close copies (such as their iteration of Captain John Smith's Virginia) and with new matter, as is the case here. The present work replaced Hondius' Indiae Orientalis Praecipuae, In quibus Moluccae celeberrimae sunt, which had been in the atlas since 1606 and which was primarily drawn from Linschoten's maps. The new map was unmatched by anything Blaeu had yet produced. In 1633, Blaeu succeeded Gerritsz in his VOC position and acquired several of the late chartmaker's own copperplates, including one of the East Indies. To this, Blaeu would apply cartouches and his imprint, publishing it in 1635 as India quae Orientalis dicitur, et Insulae Adiacentes. Blaeu's role as the official VOC chartmaker allowed him to reveal information that was unavailable to Jansson.

Publication History and Census

This map was engraved for inclusion in the 1630 Appendix to the Hondius atlas and remained in the work until the 1675 Latin edition. The current example conforms typographically to the 1638 German edition of Jansson's Newer Atlas, oder Weltbeschreibung. While we see no separate examples of this specific edition in OCLC, the map is well represented in institutional collections in its other editions.