1745 Mannevillette First Edition Map of the Persian Gulf

This is the suppressed and thus extremely rare 1745 first edition of D'Après de Mannevillette's (1707 - 1780) groundbreaking map of the Persian Gulf. It is perhaps the earliest European map of the Persian Gulf based upon actual navigation and near unobtainable to the collector.

A Closer Look

The chart covers the Persian Gulf in full, from Basra on the Shatt al-Arab to the Gulf of Oman. Muscat (Mascatte) is identified as a settlement and safe anchorage. It includes the coasts of present-day Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and the coast of northern Oman, and in the northwest, coastal parts of Kuwait, Iran, and Iraq. The map offers the greatest detail on the Persian coastline, where there are numerous depth soundings, several forts, and trade cities noted, including Banderabassi, Congo, Laste, Basitu, and Bassora (Basra). The Arabian side of the gulf is less well mapped. Two islands are significant, Baharem (Bahrain) and Samac, the latter a mismapping of peninsular Qatar as an island. This is likely the earliest such map to make this error, which was followed by Carsten Niebuhr (1765), d'Anville (1775), and Bellin (1776). Mannevillette, like most other European navigators, did not visit the western gulf coast due to an abundance of coral reefs blocking access for deep-draft ocean-going ships. Instead, he received reconnaissance from local nakhudas (skippers) who freely navigated the area in shallow-draft dhows.

A Censored First Edition

All maps from the 1745 first edition of the Neptune Oriental are as significant as they are rare. The atlas followed Mannevillette's 1728 voyage to China wherein, using the most up-to-date hydrographic instruments, he corrected latitudes and made new charts all along the route. When he returned to France, he devised a plan to publish new maps of the route to China: including charts of the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the coasts of India, Malaya, the northern parts of Indonesia, Indochina, and China. His Neptune Oriental, published for the Compagnie des Indes (French East India Company), appeared in 1745 and featured twenty-five groundbreaking maps. In reviewing the work, the French Admiralty considered the information contained to be so accurate and advanced over earlier charts that it was a threat to French colonial and maritime interests in the Far East. According to Filliozat, 'the French Admiralty considering that the Neptune Oriental was too dangerous... navigation, ordered the remaining copies to be destroyed' (Filliozat, Manonmani, Indian Journal of History of Science, 292, 1994, p. 341). Consequently, despite much revised and expanded issues of the Neptune Orientale appearing in 1775 (59 maps) and 1775 - 1781, the important first edition remains exceedingly rare. While the 1775 edition is common, we note only three surviving examples of the 1745 edition in the OCLC.

Publication History and Census

This map was engraved by Guillaume d'Heulland for the 1745 first edition of D'Après de Mannevillette's Neptune Oriental. Like all the maps from this edition, most examples were confiscated and destroyed. The map was replaced in the 1775 second edition of the Neptune Oriental with a completely new Persian Gulf map based upon the navigations of René Julien Le Floch de la Carrière (1730 - 1792). We see examples of the separate chart only at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The full 1745 edition of the atlas is known at the Library of Congress and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.