Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
As geographical knowledge increased during the early 18th century, debate raged about
whether California was truly an island. Despite a reliable eyewitness report from a Spanish
missionary, Eusebio Kino, that Lower California was a peninsula, many leading cartograph-
ers, such as Herman Moll, continued to prefer the traditional island shape. The Dutch pub-
lisher Pieter van der Aa offered his customers a choice between maps portraying California
as an island and maps depicting it as a peninsula. In 1747 King Ferdinand VI of Spain settled
the question by issuing a royal decree stating that California was not an island. The geograph-
ical myth of a detached California soon became a footnote of history.
Around the turn of the 18th century, when this map of North and South America was en-
graved, the 'New World' was still a distant and largely unknown place for many Europeans.
The island of California is just one of many speculative pieces of information featured here.
Many details, from the courses of rivers to the positions of Pacific Islands, are highly inaccur-
ate and several of the boundaries have little, if any, basis in fact. The fictitious realm of
Terra
Esonis
(corresponding roughly to Alaska and eastern Siberia) occupies a large, almost blank
expanse in the northwest. To modern eyes, such imaginative details enhance the impression
of the map as an old and beautiful object. Like its style of engraving, hand-coloured outlines
and text in Latin, they are part of its charm.
The map was created by the Dutch cartographer Carel Allard, who headed his family's
business in Amsterdam between 1691 and 1706. Our example forms part of a two-volume at-
las compiled from the work of several Dutch mapmakers, chiefly Frederick de Wit, and sold
in London by Christopher Browne. The atlas formerly belonged to the Board of Customs,
which was responsible for controlling imports and exports and preventing smuggling. The
fact that it was owned by the government and, we believe, had a practical function as a work
of reference, reminds us that this map is more than just an historical curiosity. Although its
claim to be the 'very latest map' (
recentissima tabula
) of the Americas is hyperbole, maps of
this kind were actually the best - and often only - means of access to geographical inform-
ation about distant lands. The New World portrayed here may strike us today as a world of
imagination but, for those who first used it, this map was the gateway to a world of know-
ledge.
