1720 Gerard Van Keulen Map of the Pacific Ocean and Americas

A remarkable untitled c. 1720 Gerard van Keulen map of the Pacific and the Americas. The map is rich with fascinating content, reflecting the degree to which the Pacific remained a terra incognita well into the 18th century. Points of interest include California as an Island, a vast landmass named 'Terre de Compagnie' between America and Asia, and the mapping of the discoveries of Álvaro de Mendaña y Neira (Solomon Islands) and Pedro Ferdinand de Quiros (Quiri Regio).

A Closer Look

The map offers broad and ambitious coverage, embracing the expansive Pacific Ocean and all of North and South America. In the north, coverage is bounded by Compagnie's Land, a speculative landmass associated with early Dutch landings on the Kuril Islands. In the south, it is bounded by Terre Australis, another speculative landmass with origins dating to the theoretical writings of Aristotle. A bold Antimeridian runs through the center of the map at 228°. North America features a wealth of coastal detail, but little inland content. Boston (Bosin) and New York (Nieuw Yorck) are named. The transition from Dutch to English to Spanish placenames suggests a variety of different sources.

Printed Maps with Insular California

This map illustrates California as an Island following what is commonly known as the Second Sanson Model. The earliest surviving map to illustrate California as an island is considered to be the 1622 title page to the Michiel Colijn edition of Antonio Herrera's Descriptio Indiae Occidentalis. Even so, the insular California convention formally dates to 1620, when the Dutch seized a Spanish ship transporting the account of Friar Antonio de la Ascension, which was intended for the Council of the Indies. In that work, the good Friar asserted his belief that California is insular - although his sources remain unknown. While the Friar Antonio account is now lost, a legend on the Henry Briggs map of 1625 conveys this information and that Briggs saw such a map in 1622. Colijn may have seen the same map when preparing this Herrera title page.

The insular California presented here is often erroneously referred to as the 'Sanson Model.' The cartography is derived from a 1635 map of the North American Arctic drawn by Luke Foxe. It was Foxe who invented many of the place names and added various inlets to northern California. Among these are Talaaago, R. de Estiete, and the curious peninsula extending westward from the mainland, Agubela de Cato. Foxe's sources remain a mystery, and his mapping may be simple fantasy, but Sanson embraced the model wholeheartedly. Although Sanson did not invent this form of insular California, his substantial influence did popularize it with subsequent cartographers - including, as here, the Van Keulen family.

Quiri Regio

This map is distinguished from its predecessors for the inclusion of a large island, Quiri Regio, located near New Guinea, and other information from the Quiros Expedition. Quiri Regio refers to the claims of the Portuguese navigator Pedro Ferdinand de Quiros (1563 - 1614). Quiros cut his teeth on the ill-fated 1595 Álvaro de Mendaña y Neira voyage to colonize the Solomon Islands (here oversized islands near the center), on which he served as chief pilot, taking over the expedition after Mendaña's death and successfully navigating the surviving ship to the Philippines. Back in Spain, Quiros became obsessed with leading a new voyage to the Pacific to discover and colonize the long-speculated Great Southern Continent, Terre Australis.

Quiros petitioned King Philip III for support, which he received, and by 1606 he was once again in the South Pacific, this time at the head of his own expedition. The expedition encountered Henderson Island and Ducie Island, followed by Rakahanga (part of the Northern Cook Islands) and the Buen Viaje Islands (now Butaritari and Makin in present-day Kiribati). It is also likely that the crew sighted Tahiti and the Tuamotu Archipelago. Due to a change in itinerary, Queirós narrowly missed the Marquesas and New Zealand. In May of 1606, he discovered Vanuatu, which he named Austrialia del Espíritu Santo. There, he performed elaborate rituals claiming it and the vast continent Terre Australis, which he believed he was on, for Spain. He also established a colony, Nueba Hierusalem, and a knightly order, the Knights of the Holy Ghost, to defend it. This is the land here named Quriri Regio.

Nueba Hierusalem collapsed within months due to attacking from the Indigenous Ni-Vanuatu and a rebellious crew. While exploring some of the surrounding archipelago, Qurios' crew mutinied. Quiros eventually made his way back to Mexico and, ultimately, Spain, where he spent the remainder of his days composing memorials propagandizing his voyage. The most significant for our interests is the Eighth Memorial, first printed in Madrid in 1608, then in Seville in 1609, and reprinted in 1612 by Hessel Gerritsz. Therein, Quiros describes Austrialia de Espiritu Santo to be as wide as Europe, Asia Minor, the Caspian Sea, and Persia combined, 'in its outline, it quarters the entire Globe.' The memorial was used as a cartographic source for mapmakers well into the 18th century.

Compagnie Landt

An unusual yellow-outlined landmass identified as Compagnie Landt here stretches from the Strait of Anian westward from northwestern North America to Hokkaido (t'Landt van Eso). Compagnie Landt dates to the exploration of Vries and Coen, who skirted the eastern coast of Japan and Hokkaido (then known as Yedo or Yeco) and sighted the Japanese Kuril islands of Kunashir and Iturup. They sailed fully around Kunashir, but only sighted the western shore of the larger Iturup before claiming both islands for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and naming them Compagnies Landt. Cartographers began mapping Compagnies Landt as a near-continent-sized landmass stretching all the way to America. While based upon actual sightings of the Aleutian and Kuril Islands, limited exploration led explorers to believe they were seeing not a chain of small islands, but rather a part of an expansive mainland. These conclusions would be mirrored later in the 18th century by cartographers like Gerhard Friedrich Müller, who rendered the area as a great peninsula, until the dogged and meticulous mapping of Captain James Cook finally shed scientific light on the region.

Het Onbekende Zuyd Land

Massing at the base of the map and to the west of the 228° Antimeridian is the speculative shoreline of postulated Southern Continent, or Terre Australis Incognita, or here labeled in Dutch 'Onbekende Zuyd Land'. Long before the discovery of Antarctica, the southern continent, supposedly capping the South Pole, was speculated upon by European geographers of the 16th and 17th centuries. It was thought, based upon the writings of Aristotle, that the globe was a place of balance, and thus, geographers presumed the bulk of Eurasia must be counterbalanced by a similar landmass in the Southern Hemisphere, just as, they argued, the Americas counterbalanced Africa and Europe. Many explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries sought the Great Southern continent, including Quiros, Drake, and Cook, but Antarctica itself was not truly discovered until Edward Bransfield and William Smith sighted the Antarctic Peninsula in 1820.

Publication History and Census

This map was first published by Gerard van Keulen in 1704, but may trace its lineage to Johannes Van Keulen's similar map of 1680. There are two states. The second state (as here) includes new content reflecting the navigations and claims of Pedro Ferdinand de Quiros, including a more comprehensive treatment of New Guinea and the addition of the speculative 'Quriri Regio'. The map appeared in volume V of the De nieuwe Groote ligtende zee-fakkel. Scarce on the market.