1752 Buache Map of the World on a Polar Projection (Arctic)

This is a beautiful 1752 Philippe Buache map of the world represented on an unusual polar projection rendered from the North Pole. The map covers from the North Pole Arctic region south beyond Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land) to include parts of New Zealand and even Cap de la Circoncision (Bouvet Island).

Buache's System of Geography

Buache published this map with a 1752 essay he presented to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. This paper, Essai de Géographie Physique, argued that the Earth's great river basins are defined by major mountain ranges, many of which he believed extended beneath the oceans. The map's delineation of physical geography, both on the surface and below the sea, supports this theory and, true to form, Buache has added additional heretofore unknown mountain ranges where necessary to support his theory. Some of these include speculative mountainous regions in the northern Sahara, a mountain range bisecting central India, another along the Orinoco basin, and undersea mountain ranges connecting many Pacific islands. Buache believed that the 'blank spaces' on world maps could be mathematically deduced, making it unnecessary to wait for the era's great explorers to return from their world-spanning voyages with first-hand information. This innovative idea enthralled many Parisian intellectuals, and Buache was admitted into the Royal Academy of Sciences the same year this map and the associated essay were published.

An Intriguing Map

The intriguing aspects of Buache's work are not limited to his innovative (if not entirely correct) geological theories. Additional elements of interest include various pre-Cook notions of world geography. Among these is an uncertain mapping of eastern Australia connecting it to New Guinea, and the mapping of some smaller Melanesian islands identified here as Terre du St. Espirit, which were, in fact, the New Hebrides mis-mapped by the near-insane 17th-century Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queiros.

The Sea of the West

Buache also includes a magnificent inland sea, called the Sea of the West or, in this case, the Mer de L'Ouest, in the northwestern part of America. This body of water, alternatively called the Sea of the West or Baye de l'Ouest, was speculated by Philippe Buache and Delisle in the early 18th century based upon wishful thinking, American Indian stories, and the somewhat questionable 16th-century explorations of Juan de Fuca. Here, Buache gives the Mer de l'Ouest its fullest expression. Curiously, he specifically does not connect it to either the factual network of lakes and rivers extending westward from the Hudson Bay or to the speculative De Fonte network just to the north.

The Sea of the West was a common feature on many mid-18th century pre-Cook French maps. Its earliest appearance was likely on Jean-Baptiste Nolin's 1742 L'Amerique ou le Nouveau Continent; Nolin appears to have copied the relevant cartography from an unpublished manuscript globe by the great mapmaker, Guillaume De l'Isle. Then, starting in 1752, J. N. De l'Isle and Philip Buache began presenting the Sea of the West as a monumental bay in conjunction with a viable Northwest Passage. Though De l'Isle and Buache were immediately accused of fraud concerning this geographical feature, the Sea of the West appeared on many maps - some editions even post-dating Cook.

Publication History and Census

This map was created and published by Philippe Buache, engraved by Desbruslins, and published in 1752 with Buache's Essai de Géographie Physique. Two examples are cataloged in OCLC and are part of the institutional collections at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the University of Texas at Arlington.