Cambaia (Gujarat and the Indian subcontinent)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Cambaia', title in a strapwork cartouche lower left

Position: part two, p. 83 (signature Ff2), headed 'Cambaja'

Text: verso p. 84, Beschryvinghe van Cambaja

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. 83 (Ff2), headed 'Cambaja', and on the verso, p. 84, part of the Dutch description of Cambaya. North is at the top (Septentrio). The map shows the Indus and the Gulf of Cambay, with Dio (Diu), Goga, Cambaja, Gandar, Baroche, Surrate, Damaom, Bacaim, Bombaim, Chaul and Dabul down the west coast; Lahor, Citor and Mandoa inland; the Guenga fluvius crossing to the east; and on the east coast Orixa, Narsingapatam and Masulipatam.

The Dutch text on p. 84 says that the king of Cambaya, once a heathen, had taken up the faith of Muhammad, while his subjects were half Muslim and half heathen, many eating no meat; it names the Resbuti (Rajputs) as the native nobility; the coastal towns Damanum, Bandora, Curate, Ranel and Basuin, two of them destroyed by the Portuguese; the city of Diu with its Portuguese fortress; Cambaya itself, called the Cairo of India; Campanel, the royal city on a high mountain within a sevenfold wall; the king's army of 150,000 horse and 500,000 foot, with great guns each drawn by two hundred oxen and two hundred armoured elephants; and his defeat by the 'Mogores Tartaren', the Mughals, who now held a great part of the kingdom.

Condition

Excellent; only a slight chip in the margin at the upper right and some slight discolouration in the lower margin.

References & Bibliography

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 Gujarat and the Indian west coast from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the Dutch description of the kingdom of Cambaya on the verso, in excellent condition.

The coast from Diu to Dabul is crowded with the trading towns of the Portuguese Estado da Índia, Surat, Daman, Bassein and Chaul among them, and with 'Bombaim', the later Bombay, then a small Portuguese possession. The text on the verso tells of the fall of the sultanate of Gujarat to the Mughals, which had taken place only a generation earlier.

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

Cambay, or Gujarat, was the great textile and trading coast of western India. The Mughal emperor Akbar had conquered the sultanate in 1572 to 1573, and the text on the verso reports that news to Dutch readers. Within twenty years the Dutch East India Company opened its factory at Surat, which appears on this map.

Provenance

Available on request.