One map, two purposes: Willem Blaeu's second 'West Indische paskaart' of 1630.

by: Tony Campbell

AT FIRST GLANCE, the recently discovered map of North America and the West Indies[1] illustrated here might seem a typical example of seventeenth-century Dutch work. The reverse text found on the original would also tend to confirm that the sheet derived from one of the standard Amsterdam atlases. A number of oddities, however, become apparent on a closer look. The twin circles by the Tropic of Cancer, for example, are incomplete, and only the final part of the inscription in the top left-hand corner is present, [Americae Septentrio]nalis Pars. And why is there a beheaded Amerindian at the foot of the sheet?

Compass Points

A series in which we highlight unusual and interesting features on early maps.

An even more meticulous examination would supply at least part of the answer. While the left-hand border displays a platemark, there is no sign of one on the other three sides. Their masked edges reveal that this chart, supposedly of the West Indies, is actually a section from a far larger plate, whose unwanted areas had been printed off onto a separate piece of paper which was subsequently discarded. The publisher's sensible decision to use as his artificial limits the Equator for the lower border, the latitude scale for the eastern edge, and a neatly inked ruled line along the top, helped to cover up the deception.

The incomplete circles, already mentioned, allowed the full chart's extent to be predicted with some confidence. According to the traditional arrangement of rhumb lines devised for the medieval portolan charts, the inner circle would have been placed centrally, and the four intersection points visible at the sheet's western edge would lie on the circumference of a far larger circle, probably running close to the chart's outer limits. From this it was clear that the full chart must have covered the whole of the Atlantic. The most likely author was Willem Janszoon Blaeu, and so it transpired. Comparison between the two illustrations[2] shows how the North American detail, measuring 42 - 55cm/16½ - 21½in, fits into the mother-map, identified as Blaeu's second West Indische paskaart and extending, on a single copper plate, to an impressive 78 - 99cm/30¾ - 39in.

Blaeu was rushed into publishing the 1634 German edition of his Atlas Novus before it was fully ready. Faced with the lack of a West Indies sheet, he cleverly extracted the relevant section from an existing chart of the Atlantic. On the left is the only example of the extract traceable today (By courtesy of Robert Douwma Prints and Maps).

There is at least one other surviving example of the atlas-size extract illustrated here. It was described in 1927 by F. C. Wieder, who found one in a copy of the 1634 German edition of Blaeu's Atlas Novus[3]. The printed text on the reverse of this second example was now explained. The genesis of the Atlas Novus has been traced to an advertisement of February 1634 in which Blaeu announced his intention of issuing an 'international edition' of an enlarged world atlas[4]. This was to be offered in four alternative languages, the German version appearing about Easter of that year, the others in the summer.

Since the unique recorded copy of the 1634 German edition of the Atlas Novus is untraceable today[5], Wieder's description must suffice. Even though he does not speculate why such an extract from a large sea chart should find its way into a published atlas, the reason seems clear: it was a clever piece of opportunism on the part of Blaeu, faced with an impossible publishing deadline. Wieder's own account reveals many signs of haste in the atlas's production[6]. The title-page of the 1634 atlas, for instance, was created by sticking a printed overlay onto the 1631 version, and amending the original roman date in ink. Six of the maps were in proof form and two of the sheets which were due to be included for the first time in the 1635 edition - Scandinavia and the East Indies - were absent altogether, evidently not yet ready.

The introductory matter for the atlas was dated March 1634, in line with Blaeu's claim that the work would be ready by Easter. To avoid undue postponement of the German edition, incomplete maps were presumably either included in their proof form, if the missing details were not too important, or were omitted altogether. The exceptions to this were the maps of the Rhine and Danube, which Blaeu extracted from Mercator's 1590 wall-map of Germany[7], and the 'Insulae Americanae', for which he had a similar temporary substitute to hand.

The printed title of this makeshift stop-gap for the map of the West Indies and North America in the Atlas Novus is stuck down over the remaining half of what had always been an empty cartouche. Confusingly, the title wording is precisely the same as that on the standard map of the region, dedicated to A. C. van der Burgh and found in the Blaeu atlases from 1635 onwards[8]. The text on the reverse of the recently identified example of the paskaart extract appears to be the same as that described by Wieder for the edition of 1634 and by Koeman for that of 1635, but neither edition was available for comparison. The handwritten plate number of the illustrated example (179) distinguishes the position it must have originally occupied in its atlas from that described for the Wieder atlas (149), thus establishing that the two recorded copies could not be one and the same.

Just as the extract is known in only two copies, so the entire paskaart survives in no more than a pair of recorded examples. Wieder knew of none; Destombes and Gernez, writing in 1949, could cite only the copy in the Bibliothèque Royale Albert 1[er], Brussels[9]; and Keuning's posthumous biography of Blaeu merely added the example in the Badische Landesbibliothek, Karlsruhe[10]

Blaeu had published an earlier version of the West Indische paskaart, probably in the 1620s[11]. What contrasts this second paskaart with that first attempt is the fact that the latter is drawn on Mercator's projection, the traditional rhumb line network notwithstanding. This projection was of particular value to mariners since it was the only one on which compass bearings appeared as straight lines. Establishing the priority among undated charts, some of which have only survived in later printings, is hazardous, but Destombes and Gernez conclude that this must be one of the earliest printed charts to be drawn on Mercator's projection, and probably the first such chart of the Atlantic[12].

Doubtless it was this increased usefulness which led to the second West Indische paskaart being so regularly reissued and copied, some ten later states and derivatives having been indentifìed[13]. In this way Blaeu's chart was kept alive throughout the seventeenth century. Despite the considerable numbers in which these various versions were presumably produced, a few examples at most have survived of each.