Malabar (the Malabar and Coromandel Coasts)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Malabar', title in a cartouche lower right; Ceylon ('Cellon') upper right

Position: p. 75 (signature 2E6), headed 'Malabar'

Text: verso p. 76, the Beschryvinghe van Malabar

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. 75 (2E6), headed 'Malabar', and on the verso, p. 76, the Dutch description of Malabar. The map shows the coastline, principal towns and terrain, with Ceylon in the upper right and the cartouche 'Malabar' lower right.

Condition

Slight damage to the margins at the lower left and upper right. A small puncture in the margin at the lower right corner.

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 Malabar 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 follows the pepper coast from Goa past Mangalore, Cannanore, Calicut, Cranganore and Cochin to the southern cape, with the mountains of the Ghats, and across to the Coromandel coast and Ceylon. The text on p. 76 tells how the king of Calicut, once the mightiest ruler of Malabar, was brought low after the Portuguese sided with the king of Cochin, and calls Calicut the most famous trading town of India, rich in pepper, ginger and cassia.

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

Malabar was where Vasco da Gama landed in 1498 and the centre of the European pepper trade; Dutch ships would reach these coasts within a few years of the Caert-Thresoor.

Provenance

Available on request.