America aen het Zuyden (South America)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: South America with the Mar del Zur, the South Atlantic, a part of Africa and a large Terra Australis incognita; the equator named 'Linea Aequinoctialis'

Position: p. 155, headed 'America aen het Zuyden'

Text: verso p. 156, the beginning of the Beschryvinghe van America aen het Zuyden

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

Colouring: Uncoloured

Condition

Good. Some damage and discolouration to the margins.

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 South 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 on the verso.

The continent is shown with Peru, Brazil and Patagonia, the Amazon and the Rio de la Plata, and the Strait of Magellan at the foot. Across the South Atlantic lie the islands on the route to the East, Fernando de Noronha, Ascension, St Helena and Tristan da Cunha, and in the lower right corner the coast of the great unknown southern continent, Terra Australis incognita. The text on the verso explains the name America after Amerigo Vespucci and divides the land between the Portuguese, east of the Maranhão, and the King of Spain.

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

The Caert-Thresoor appeared just as the Dutch began to sail to South America themselves: in 1598 the fleets of Jacques Mahu and Olivier van Noort left for the Strait of Magellan, and the islands shown here in the South Atlantic were the waypoints of the route to the East Indies.