Langenes's France, 1598: Fourteen Provinces from the First Dutch Pocket Atlas

The kingdom of France province by province, from Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, Middelburg 1598

In 1598 Barent Langenes of Middelburg published the Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas: small copperplate maps by Pieter van den Keere and Jodocus Hondius, each with a description of the country in Dutch on the back, in an oblong octavo that a reader could carry and afford. A remarkable share of the book is given to France. Where the great folio atlases of the day showed the kingdom on a handful of sheets, the Caert-Thresoor goes through it province by province.

We have taken a copy of the first edition apart and now offer fourteen of its French maps. Each leaf carries the map on one side and, on the other, the Dutch text written for it.

The kingdom

Pieter van den Keere's general map, Vranckrijck, opens the series. It runs from the Channel and the Low Countries to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, and the text on its back follows Caesar's division of Gaul into Belgica, Celtica and Aquitania.

The north and the Channel coast

Normandie reaches from Jersey and the Cotentin to Rouen and Dieppe, with the story of Rollo and the Northmen on the verso. Boulonnois ende Calais shows the coast facing England, and Vermendois, drawn with east at the top, the frontier country around Saint-Quentin that was fought over until the Peace of Vervins in 1598.

The west

Bretaigne, Anjou and Poictou follow the Atlantic side of the kingdom, Poitou with the university of Poitiers and its Roman remains described on the back.

The centre and the south-west

Berry around Bourges, Limousin and Gascogne between the Garonne and the Pyrenees. The Limousin plate is a curiosity: titled Limania, it in fact shows the Limagne of Auvergne around Clermont and the Allier, a confusion of names carried into the text itself.

The east and the south

Bourgogne, the old duchy of the Burgundian dukes who once ruled the Low Countries; Savoye, the Alpine duchy on the Spanish Road; the papal Comtat Venaissin around Avignon; and Provence, drawn with south at the top and the Mediterranean full of ships and sea monsters.

Why France

For a Dutch reader of 1598 France was close at hand. That year Henry IV ended the Wars of Religion with the Edict of Nantes and made peace with Spain at Vervins, while the Dutch Republic fought on. The Caert-Thresoor gave its readers the neighbouring kingdom in the same detail as their own provinces, in their own language.

The series

The fourteen maps are listed separately below, so that a collector can choose the region that matters to them. The series can also be acquired together; please contact us for the price.