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EARLY CHART OF NORTHEAST ASIA
[CHART - ASIA]. KEULEN, Johannes van. Pascaarte vande Noord Oost Cust van Asia verthoonende in sich alle de Zee-custen van Tartarien, van Iapan tot Nova Zemla alles op wassende graaden geleght.
Amsterdam, Johannes van Keulen, ca. 1700. Large engraved chart (plate size 52.5 x 60). With title below a seated sultan, surrounded by garlands of fruit and mounted tartars in battle scenes, with severed heads lying at the base; scales of longitude in the head and foot borders and latitude down the centre of the chart; 2 compasses (north above); rhumb lines; and 2 ships in the sea. Coloured by an early hand, the map in outline.
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Large single-sheet sea chart of the coast of east Asia and the Arctic Ocean in a Mercator projection, covering the coast from Japan and Korea to Nova Zemlya. It first appeared in the first editions of Johannes van Keulen’s maritime atlas in 1680 and of his pilot guide De ... Zee-Fackel (The Sea Torch) in 1681. Koeman still records it in an edition of 1709, but it appears to have been omitted from later editions. It was apparently never modified, so that all printings reflect the state of European knowledge of east Asia and the Arctic in 1680. It therefore precedes Nicolaas Witsen's famous wall map of Siberia by seven years, as well as extending further to include Japan and Korea (both labled with their modern names). The coast from the Bering Strait to the Kamchatka peninsula has been greatly condensed, so that the tip of Kamchatka lies near Saint Lawrence Island. Japan is turned so that its length runs nearly eastwest, and a small piece of present-day Alaska appears as (Dutch East India) Company's Land. Nova Zemlya (except for its uncharted east coast) and the Russian coast to its west were still better known than those further east, and are depicted in more detail. At this date it was still hoped that the Arctic might prove practically navigable and therefore offer a shorter trade route to the Far East via a Northeast Passage.
Since the plates for the map were not modified over the years, it is difficult to know which edition the present copy came from. The paper is unusually heavy, and if there is any watermark it is small and difficult to make out.
Trimmed close to the plate edges and folded down the middle, with remains of a stub from mounting in the folio atlas or pilot guide and with two small holes through the fold. Otherwise a very good copy of an important map for the history of the exploration of the Arctic and east Asia.
