Aracam (Arakan, Pegu and the Bay of Bengal)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Aracam', title in a strapwork cartouche upper left with a scale of Spanish miles (Milliaria Hispanica); signed 'Petrus Kaerius caelavit'; east at the top

Position: part two, p. 67 (signature Ee2), headed 'Aracam'

Text: verso p. 68, Beschryvinghe van Bengala

Format: Copperplate engraving on a leaf of the oblong octavo atlas

Colouring: Uncoloured

Collation & Technical Description

One leaf from the Caert-Thresoor: the map on p. 67 (Ee2), headed 'Aracam', and on the verso, p. 68, the beginning of the Dutch Beschryvinghe van Bengala. The map is oriented with east at the top (Oriens), north to the left. It shows the kingdom of Aracam (Arakan) on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, with Pegu, Martabam, Cosmin and Negrais, the kingdoms of Ava and Siam inland, Bengala, Chatigam (Chittagong) and Satagam to the west, the islands and shoals off the coast, and the Ganges region as Indiae intra Gangem pars.

The Dutch text on p. 68 describes the kingdom of Bengal, stretching 120 leagues along the coast; the river Chaberis, thought by some to be the Ganges; the rice, sugar, ginger and long pepper; the cotton and silk; the many merchants, Moors, Persians and Abyssinians; the trading towns of Catigan and Satigan; and the fine embroidered textiles that, says the text, the weavers of Europe could not improve upon.

Condition

The margins on the right side slightly damaged; light discolouration at the top and right side.

References & Bibliography

Suárez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia (1999), fig. 107. Van der Krogt, Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, III, 341:01 (the atlas). Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici, II, p. 254, Lan 1. Schilder, Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica, VII, 16.1. Burger, Het Caert-Thresoor (1930). King, Miniature Antique Maps (1996).

Description

A small map of Arakan and Pegu, on the coast of present-day Myanmar, engraved and signed by Pieter van den Keere, from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the Dutch description of Bengal on the verso.

It is one of the earliest printed maps to concentrate on Burma. The emphasis is on the coast and the river mouths, the trading world of the seagoing kingdom of Arakan and its neighbour Pegu set out with east at the top.

The Caert-Thresoor was the first Dutch pocket atlas: small copperplate maps by Pieter van den Keere (Petrus Kaerius) and Jodocus Hondius, each with a description of the country in Dutch, in an oblong octavo meant to be cheaper and handier than the great folio atlases of Ortelius and Mercator. It appeared in 1598, a year after the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies had returned, and it brought the geography of the whole known world within reach of a wider public. The plates proved durable: Petrus Bertius reused them for the Latin Tabularum geographicarum contractarum from 1600 and a French edition followed in 1602, so that the Dutch text of 1598 is the first and earliest form in which these maps were issued.

Historical Significance

In 1598 the coasts of Bengal and Burma were known in Europe almost only through the Portuguese, and the first Dutch ships had just reached the East Indies. A separate map of Arakan in a Dutch pocket atlas shows how quickly the Republic took up the Asian trade as its own subject; within a generation the Dutch East India Company was trading in rice and slaves at Arakan's capital Mrauk U.

Provenance

Available on request.