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RARE MAP OF DUTCH COLONIES ESSEQUIBO, BERBICE & DEMERARA
[MAP - AMERICA - SOUTH - GUYANA]. BOUCHENROEDER, Friedrich von. A Map of Part of Dutch Guyana; containing the Colonies of Essequebo, Demerary & Berbice, in which are described all the lands granted under the Batavian Government. Surveyed in 1798, and 1802, by Major van Bouchenroeder, with additions.
London, William Faden, 20 November 1804. Large engraved map "designed and engraved by John Roper" on a scale of ca. 1:235,000, comprising 2 1/2 very large sheets (together 74 x 143 cm), with the title below left above two scales and a key to the various plantation crops, untilled land, forest and Indian cabins and villages, and below right a key to the approximately 135 numbered plantations, giving their names and proprietors. Further with a note on the topography of the rivers and their banks. In the present copy, the middle sheet and right-hand half-sheet have been assembled, but the left-hand sheet remains separate, the two resulting parts being stamped "36" and "37" on their backs.
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Detailed map of the Dutch colonies of Essequibo, Berbice and Demerara, now the Republic of Guyana on the northern coast of South America. From 1621 onwards these colonies formed part of the vast South American territories monopolized by the Dutch West Indian Company and, after its liquidation in 1792, by the Dutch government. The British had twice attempted unsuccessfully to seize control of these colonies, but after the French toppled the Dutch government and replaced it with the French-dominated Batavian Republic in 1795, the third Brtish attempt succeeded in 1796. The colonies briefly returned to the control of the Batavian Republic from 1802 to 1803, but the United Kingdom otherwise effectively controlled the area until the three colonies were officially ceded to them in the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. During the last phase of her control the Dutch "Comite des Colonies & Possessions de la Republique Batave en Amerique & a la Cote de Guinee" ordered the army officer Friedrich van Bouchenroeder, probably of German descent, to provide a detailed map of the three colonies. This resulted in two seperate maps that were both published in Amsterdam: the "Carte Génerale & Particulière de la Colonie d'Essequebe & Demerarie" (Amsterdam, Wouter Brave, 1798) and the "Kaart van de Colonie der Berbice gelegen in Bats. Guinea in America " (Amsterdam, Mortier Covens en Zoon, 1802). After the English seized control of the Dutch possessions in 1804, the London map seller William Faden commissioned the engraver John Roper to combine the information of the two maps to make a new map. There are in fact two versions of Roper's map, not distuinguished by Koeman, the present with the large key to the plantations ("Names of the different Plantations in the Colony of Berbice in actual Cultivation.") and another with an inset city map ("Plan of Stabroek, with its vicinity: the capital of Demerary 1804," the city that the British renamed Georgetown in 1812). Both maps are dated 1804 and it is not clear which was published first. The present is on wove paper with no watermark visible.
With waterstains in the left half of the map, a long tear along one fold and a few small tears along the edges, but still generally in good condtion. An extremely large and detailed 1804 map of the plantations in what is now Guyana.
