1595 Mercator Map of the World (First Atlas Edition)

This is Gerard and Rumold Mercator's 1587 double-hemisphere map of the world, in a handsome, untrimmed example in its first atlas edition. It is the only acquirable world map directly associated with the elder Mercator (his 1578 world map depicts only Ptolemaic knowledge). The map was executed by Gerard Mercator's son, Rumold, using a novel double-hemisphere format rather than his father's famous projection. The complex mathematics used to make the Mercator Projection may well have overtaxed Rumold's abilities - although it seems likely that the elder Mercator would have at least had some role in the production of this work: he was alive when it was completed and made its appearance in the 1587 Strabo. Whatever the reason for this decision, Maps using the Mercator Projection would not appear again for many years, but even so, the elder geographer's stamp is undeniable.

Arctic Islands

Mercator's four polar Islands are here on full display in their earliest form. With limited evidence from actual exploration, Mercator compiled now lost Arthurian histories, the accounts of John Davis and Martin Frobisher, whaling reports, the fictional explorations of the Zeno Brothers, and reasonable scientific speculation relating to observable currents and magnetic variation to derive a novel Arctic geography. He imagined four large islands surrounding an open Polar Sea, which could be accessed only by four great rivers called the 'inrushing waters'. The currents of these, all of which flowed northwards, were so great that no ship once caught could escape. In the midst of the Polar Sea, he imaged a mighty maelstrom surrounding a high pinnacle of black rock - the Rupes Nigra. To these islands he ascribed populations, including an all-female tribe of pygmies, derived from actual encounters with the Lapland Inuit, who are indeed of small stature and whose men often leave en mass on extended hunts. Mercator's schematic for the high Arctic remained dominant until the early 17th century until the discovery of Spitzburgen generated undeniable conflicting cartography.

Terra Australis or the Speculative Southern Continent

A massive Terra Australis dominates the Southern Hemisphere, extending from Tierra del Fuego nearly to New Guinea. This imaginary continent capping the South Pole was long supposed to exist by European geographers despite the lack of any evidence to support the notion. It was thought, based upon the writings of Aristotle, that the globe was a place of balances and thus geographers presumed the bulk of Eurasia must be counterbalanced by a similar landmass in the Southern Hemisphere. 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.

Northwest and Northeast Passages

Far to the north, Mercator's map displays what might be its most influential feature: the open Arctic Sea passage winding its way around the globe. These are the much sought-after Northwest (to the north of America) and Northeast Passages (over Asia). It was hoped that high-latitude maritime routes or 'passages' would provide quick access to the rich markets of Asia, which offered both an outlet for European silver and furs from the American colonies, as well as produced spices, silks, and other trade goods coveted in Europe. When Mercator included this on his map, no one had successfully navigated such a passage, but many scholars argued that it must exist. Countless explorers lost their lives in search of the apocryphal routes. Today, with the advent of global warming reducing the size of the Polar Ice Cap, a navigable passage has indeed formed.

Separate Continents

Mercator's geography was among the most decisive maps in proposing that Asia and North America were not connected. This was hinted at in the works of Waldseemüller and Münster, but the acceptance of the idea was far from universal: maps by Fine, Gastaldi, Ruscelli, and others showed Asia and America as a contiguous land mass well into the 1570s, after the printing of Mercator's 1569 wall map. Ortelius swiftly adopted Mercator's model in his atlas' maps, and it is arguably them that provided the most leverage in making this model standard - despite the lack of actual evidence of a separation of the continents. Such knowledge was not confirmed until the late 18th century navigations of Captain Cook.

Publication History and Census

Rumold Mercator engraved this map and first printed for the 1587 Duisberg edition of Strabo's Rerum geographicarum libri XVII. It was then included in editions of Mercator's Atlas Sive Cosmographicae Meditationes De Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura from the first edition of 1595 (this example). It remained in the Mercator/ Hondius atlases until 1630. This example, with the four columns of recto text, conforms to the 1595 first edition of the Mercator Atlas. While the map is relatively common in its later printings, the 1595 and 1587 editions of the map are rare. We see examples of this edition catalogued in the Universitatsbibliothek Eichstatt, the State University of New South Wales, and Yale University.