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The Lodewyckszoon Map of Southeast Asia
Theodore de Bry, 1598-9 :
[Southern Malaya, Singapore, Sumatra, Java, and southern Borneo.] A superb example. [sold] Cornelis de Houtman made the first Dutch voyage to Southeast Asia in 1595-97. Though the financial returns of the voyage were meager, de Houtman nonetheless established trade with the great pepper port of Banten, near which the Dutch colony of Batavia would soon be founded.
This first Dutch voyage to the Indies reached home in August of 1597. News of it was related in several works, the first being an anonymous account published by Barent Langenes before the year was out. Most important, however, was the Historie van Indien, published by Cornelis Claesz in April of 1598. Essentially the log of one of the expeditions participants, Willem Lodewijcksz, this book was supposed to boast a new general map of southern Malaya and the western Indonesian islands; however, in chapter 19 of the volume, we find this note:
"Here follows the chart of Java. But there is no chart. There is the accepted opinion that this mentioned chart was Lodewijcksz's chart. When the merchants saw this chart, the first printed one from this area in such detail, they have forbidden to insert this chart in the log." The forbidden map, however, was published later the same year as a loose-sheet. and the Amsterdam merchants concern for keeping the chart confidential proved futile, since before the end of the year a copy of it was published by the German chronicler, Theodore de Bry, in Part II of the Petits Voyages.
De Brys rendering of the Lodewijcksz map is typical of his beautiful engraving and aesthetic sense. One flaw crept into the copying process, however: de Brys latitude markings err by one degree as compared with the original. Lodewijcksz log records that the north coast of Bali lies at 8.5 south latitude, very close to the correct figure of 8. The Claesz /van Doetechum original follows this meticulously, but de Brys markings are mis-aligned, mistakenly placing the islands north coast at about 7 south latitude.
The map focuses exclusively on southern Malaya, Sumatra, Java, southern Borneo, and the islands east of Java through Sumbawa the limited region reconnoitered by de Houtman. The map records unprecendented detail along western and northern Java, and a plethora of small islands in the Sunda Strait itself and on the Indian Ocean threshold to it. Entering the region by piercing the waters between Sumatra and Java rather than by way of Malacca and Singapore, the crew reported so many islands on the western side of the Sunda Strait that they had difficulty finding the channel. Mataram, a city in the interior of Java, is illustrated in vignette. Though the map is conceived in the style of a mariners chart, which rarely included interior features, Mataram was relevant to the commercial affairs of European mariners. Most of the northern coast of the island had become dominated by the Muslims by about 1535, the Hindus holding on only at the eastern tip. But Muslim control over the coastal region ebbed in the latter years of the sixteenth century as the interior Muslim states of Mataram and Pajang became the new nerve centers of Muslim trade, frustrating the coastal-based European attempts to control Java. For much of the seventeenth century, Mataram, Banten, and the V.O.C. vied for control of Java.
-- http://www.cosmography.com/06-03_main-maps.htm
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Post time 8-5-2011 03:46 PM
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