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Bantam's fortunes shifted in 1609, when a fierce internal struggle drove one lead-
ership faction east, to the nearby town of Jakarta. A decade later the Dutch seized
the city and renamed it New Batavia, using the ancient Latin name for the Low
Countries.Bataviawasuseduntil1942,whenthewartimeforcesofJapanoccupied
the city and restored its earlier name of Jakarta. Thomas Hyde has written Nova
Batavia beside the place-name label, but the Selden cartographer gives it the term
by which Chinese knew it before and after 1619: Jakarta.
Can we do anything with this information? If we turn back to Selden's will, we
canextractonemoreclueabouttheoriginofthemap.Seldendeclaresthathismap
was originally acquired by 'an englishe comander who being pressed exceedingly
to restore it at good ransome would not parte with it'. If this story sounds familiar,
it is because we have heard it before. At the time I let it pass, but now it is time
to return to it. It is the tale Samuel Purchas told of how John Saris acquired the
map of China that Purchas obtained and printed in
Purchas his Pilgrimes
. Saris,
writes Purchas, confiscated it in Bantam from a Chinese merchant who failed to
make good his debts to the East India Company. After Saris returned to England,
theSarismap,asIhaverenamedit,wenttothetravelwriterRichardHakluyt.After
Hakluyt's death in 1616 it passed, along with the rest of his research materials, to
Purchas.
Purchas'sstoryaboutthismapisalmostidenticaltoSelden'sversionofhowhis
map was acquired. Are they talking about the same map? That is not possible. The
map Purchas reproduced is the standard, squared-offrendering ofthe country from
whichtherestofEastAsia,exceptforaprodigiousKorea,isabsent.Thetwomaps
are entirely different. Isit possible that Selden got muddled and attached a story he
read in Purchas to his own map? There is no reason to think so. If the stories echo
one another, it may be because they are two parts of the same story.
The will provides yet another clue. It says that the map came from 'an englishe
comander'. The term is a technical one. Each expedition the East India Company
sent to Asia was called a 'voyage', later a 'joint stock voyage', and each was led
by a 'commander'. The question to which the will gives rise is, which of them got
back to London and passed this map to Hakluyt or Purchas? The candidates are
few enough. Anthony Hippon, commander of the seventh voyage, died in Pattani
in1612.Thefamouscommanderofthesixth,HenryMiddleton,diedthefollowing
year in Bantam, as may have the commander of the fourth, Alexander Sharpleigh.
Henry Middleton's brother David, who commanded the fifth voyage and the third
joint stock voyage, drowned when his ship went down in a storm off the coast of
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