America (De Nieuwe Werelt, the New World)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'America', oval map of the western hemisphere with the legend 'An. 1492 a Christoph. Columbo inventa', with Terra Australis Incognita and Nova Guinea, decorative corner pieces

Position: p. 35 (signature C2), headed 'De nieuwe Werelt'

Text: verso p. 36, the beginning of the Beschryvinghe vande nieuwe Werelt

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. 35 (C2), headed 'De nieuwe Werelt', and on the verso, p. 36, the opening of the Dutch description of the New World. The map shows the two Americas with major rivers, terrain, regions and some larger cities, the oceans and larger islands, and a portion of the supposed southern continent.

Condition

Slight discolouration on the map side towards the upper edge. Corners at the gutter side damaged.

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

The map of America from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the opening of the Dutch description of the New World on the verso.

North America carries Nova Francia, Virginia, Florida and Nova Hispania, South America Peru, Brasilia, Chile and Patagonia down to the Strait of Magellan, with the vast Terra Australis Incognita below and Nova Guinea at the edge. The text on p. 36 asks why the ancients knew nothing of this land, and weighs the stories of Carthaginian voyages, Plato's Atlantis and Seneca's lines foretelling a new world beyond Thule, printed here in Dutch verse.

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

Maps of America from the early Dutch atlases are collected in their own right by Americana collectors; this is the first Dutch pocket-atlas map of the New World, issued in the year the first Dutch fleets set sail for the Strait of Magellan.

Provenance

Available on request.