Maldivae Insulae (Zeilan ende d'Eylanden Maldavia, Ceylon and the Maldive Islands)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Maldivae Insulae', title in a cartouche lower right; the Maldive chain with the coast of Ceylon, two ships and a spouting sea monster

Position: p. 71 (signature 2E4), headed 'Zeilan ende d'Eylanden Maldavia'

Text: verso p. 72, the Beschryvinghe van Zeilan ende d'Eylanden Maldivar

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. 71 (2E4), headed 'Zeilan ende d'Eylanden Maldavia', and on the verso, p. 72, the Dutch description of Ceylon and the Maldive Islands. The map shows the coastline of Ceylon and the individual islands of the Maldive chain, the cartouche 'Maldivae Insulae' lower right.

Condition

Small chips at the left edge.

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 Ceylon and the Maldive Islands from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the Dutch description on the verso.

The map strings the atolls of the Maldives in a long chain from the coast of Ceylon, with Colombo, Negombo and Point de Galle named, and fills the sea with two ships and a spouting sea monster. The text on p. 72 tells of Ceylon's pearls and precious stones, its nine kingdoms under Colmuchi (Colombo), where the Portuguese held a fortress, and cites both the Italian cosmographer Giovanni Antonio Magini and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten.

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

Ceylon was the cinnamon island of the Portuguese Estado da India. The reference to Linschoten, whose Itinerario of 1596 opened the Portuguese sea route to Dutch readers, shows how new the knowledge behind these Asian maps was; the Dutch East India Company would take Ceylon from the Portuguese in the following century.

Provenance

Available on request.