1700 J. Van Keulen Plan and Chart of Havana Harbor

Earliest Accurate Printed Plan and Chart of Havana.

This is a rare, beautifully engraved map and plan of Havana and its bay by the Dutch chart maker Johannes van Keulen. Its dating is not well understood, but it can be placed c. 1720 on contextual grounds. It is the earliest printed, accurate charting of Havana Bay and the earliest accurate depiction of Old Havana. The chart reflects a profound shift in Dutch-Spanish relations, documenting the emergence of robust commercial cooperation following the War of Spanish Succession (1701 - 1714) after more than 150 years of political and military hostility.

A Closer Look

This west-north-west oriented chart is elegantly and clearly engraved, with minimal ornament: a simple cartouche adorns the lower left, and the chart's sole compass rose is attractive but utilitarian. The focus of the engraving is primarily Havana's harbor and old city. The area containing these is framed by fields of pictorially engraved mountains, in contrast to the sharp detail at the work's core. The Havana Bay (Bahía de La Habana), from its mouth to its several river inlets, is charted with depth soundings, and shallows are indicated with stippling. Anchorages are not indicated - but Havana's waterfront is shown plainly. Bridges crossing several waterways are marked, and villages around the bay are noted and named, even including huts and lime kilns situated on the north coast of the bay. Havana's three principal fortresses are marked and named: the Castel del Morro and the Castel de la Punta, commanding the mouth of the harbor, and the Castel de la Fuerza, commanding the city itself.

The old city is portrayed in plan, with its grid clearly presented, with twenty-two locations keyed to a legend in the cartouche. The city wall is shown complete with its bastions, both the walls facing the channel to the north and those facing landward, to the west. While Havana's Intramuros is portrayed as planned, gridded, and developed, the extramuros appears to be all but uninhabited: a few blocks outside the city gate are sketched in, but overall, the area west of the city is marked with pictorial trees. Roadways leading off the chart are sketched in dotted lines, indicating uncertainty.

Placenames appear in a mix of Spanish and Dutch; the cartouche text is in Dutch. The southernmost detail is the Church of Jesus del Monte, Havana's first auxiliary parish, constructed outside the city in 1689. The eastern limits of the bay are marked with the village Guazabacoa (Guanabacoa), the Herberg (Inn) van Martinmenna, and the Estado de Coximar (Cojimar St.). On a point jutting out between Guanabacoa and Marimelena Bays is the shrine to Nostra Señora de Regla. Near the center of the harbor, to the south of the city, Cayo de Cruz is marked in Dutch as 'Dooden Eyland', or Dead Island.

The north shore of the bay is shown with more precise topography than the surrounding land, indicating low hills thick with trees and a rough, impassable coastline. An attached Dutch text appears to refer to this: '

Here is not very high and is covered with trees right down to the shore; along the beach itself lies a fringe of black rock full of sharp points, making it impossible to pass, as the passage is very narrow.'

Dating

The extreme scarcity of the chart, as well as the atlases in which it appeared, confounds the easy identification of editions. Consequently, the years assigned to this work in both the literature and in institutional collections are wildly imprecise. The British Library dates its example to 1700; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France dates it to 'before 1704' based on incorrect assumptions about Van Keulen's active dates. Cueto proposed a date between 1740 and 1782 instead, the latter based on a late appearance of the chart in Gerard Hulst van Keulen's atlas.

Precursors

Prior to this work, the printed mapping of Havana Harbor had been dominated by the sketch appearing in Roggeveen's 1675 Het eerste deel van het brandende veen. This rudimentary plan was copied by Mount and Page, Mortier, Coréal, and others, including the elder Van Keulens, who included that crude charting of the harbor as an inset in their 1685 chart of the Florida Strait, Pas kaart Van de Boght van Florida Med de Canaal Tusschen Florida en Cuba. The present chart represents a completely new mapping of Havana based on an actual survey; if our chronology is correct, it is the first printed iteration of this model.

The first chart noted by Cueto to include Havana's city walls and to show the bay reasonably accurately was an unsigned, undated manuscript preserved in facsimile by Ramón de la Sagrada in his 1842 Historia física, política y natural de la Isla de Cuba. De la Sagrada assigned the earliest possible date for the chart as 1695, based on the apparent completion of Havana's walls. That manuscript, oriented roughly to the southeast, presented essentially only the right half of the present work, showing Havana's walls, the forts at the mouth of the harbor, and the harbor soundings. The street grid of the city is not present; the chart does not extend to the southern limits of the harbor, and none of the land approaches to the city are detailed. If the manuscript contained text, de la Sagrada did not preserve it. Nevertheless, if Cueto and de la Sagrada were correct in assigning a 1695 date to the manuscript, it represents the earliest charting of the port of Havana based on an accurate survey, and either it, a copy, or a shared source is evidently what informed Van Keulen.

Van Keulen's plan of the city itself may have its roots in an earlier source still: a 1691 manuscript plan of Havana, attributed to surveyor and engineer Juan de Siscara. Chief Engineer of Cuba and Florida, he had, in 1674, proceeded with the construction of a long-planned defensive wall for Havana. The wall facing the harbor entrance was completed in 1680; by 1688, it included the land-facing wall separating the city from its landward countryside. Siscara's presumed death in 1690 raises the question of whether the manuscript reflected only Siscara's work, but its 1691 date makes it the earliest accurate plan of Havana's Intramuros. It is worth noting that while the above c. 1695 chart identified by de la Sagrada reflected the form of Havana's walls as presented in the Siscara plan, it did not show the grid or share its orientation. Van Keulen's work not only presents the town's grid - perhaps further developed from Siscara - but also shares the 1691 plan's west-north-west orientation, suggesting that the manuscript plan or its progeny was among Van Keulen's sources. Certainly, both Van Keulen's harbor data and city plan benefited from Spanish manuscript charts and plans, which were the best available in the 1690s. Thus, any earlier date is unlikely.

Nuestra Señora de la Regla

Among the features of this chart not appearing on the c.1695 manuscript is the shrine of Nuestra Señora de la Regla, situated on a point jutting into the western part of Havana Bay. The village there had been home to an image of the Virgin, brought to Cuba in the late 17th century. Nuestra Señora de la Regla was declared the patron saint of the village on December 26, 1714, and the village was named after the shrine. It is unlikely that the name would have come to Van Keulen any sooner than this, and we are disinclined to credit a date for this chart any earlier than that; an early date of 1720 for the chart is plausible.

An array of charts - primarily British, but also German and French copies of them - followed this one. They are characterized by depth soundings very similar to those of the Van Keulen, and by a virtually identical use of the Siscara plan of the city. They differ in their orientation, uniformly facing the east-south-east. Among their other similarities to the Van Keulen are that their dating is not widely agreed upon and that their long print histories confound efforts to form an accurate chronology. However, a few are well understood and can be firmly postdated to the Van Keulen. A 1739 Thomas Milton map is quite plainly similar to the Van Keulen, but includes significantly more detail for Havana's extramuros and surrounding villages; likewise, the 1739 Chasserau, published by Bowles. Both also include defenses added to the Castel del Morro in the build-up of Spanish defenses before the 1743 War of Jenkins' Ear. The 1762 Mount and Page chart, attributed to Captain James Phelps, includes harbor defenses, chains, and cannon reflecting the British siege and capture of the city during the Seven Years' War (1756 - 1763). These were well-distributed works, and it is not credible that the Van Keulen could have been produced afterward without those improvements. It is similarly unlikely that these latter works were entirely independent of the Van Keulen (or a mutual source), as these exhibit strong similarities in the depth soundings.

More evidence for the chronology of the maps may lie in the bay itself. The island ofCayo de Cruz (now a manmade peninsula) is given by Van Keulen Dooden Eyland, 'Dead' or 'Barren Island.' Uniformly, English charts name this 'Cayo de Putas' (Whore's Cay) and 'Isla de Mugeres', probably a misspelling of Mujeres, or woman's island. During the course of the 18th century, this barren strip was used to exile prostitutes (not only women; some later maps name this 'Cayo Puto.') The Dutch name - based on plain observation - contrasts with the name used in the English charts, based on a familiarity with the use of the island, suggesting that the latter works were produced based on periods of occupation. That the Van Keulen does not use any of the names used on the English charts for this sad little strip of land is strong evidence that the Dutch chart predates the English ones. So, while a date as late as 1739 cannot be dismissed for the Van Keulen, it is difficult to argue that his chart did not provide the basis for the 1739 British maps, and indeed all other British charts of Havana Bay produced through to the conclusion of the Seven Years' War.

Publication History and Census

The map was engraved at some point after 1714 for inclusion in either Johannes Van Keulen's atlases or those of his heir Johannes II. A conservative date of 1720 is a reasonable starting point. It likely continued in print well into the tenure of Johannes II's son, Gerard Hulst, with no changes in the engraving or (confusingly) the mapmaker's imprint. We suspect the paper to be consistent with Gerard's output, so the actual date of printing may be as late as 1780. The chart is extremely rare; it is cataloged only in the collections of the British Library (dated 1700) and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (dated 1704). We have seen the chart on the market only once (this example).

Cartographers

Johannes II van Keulen (1704 - 1755) was a Dutch map publisher, engraver, chartmaker, and instrument seller active in Amsterdam in the first half of the 19th century. He is a scion of the significant van Keulen publishing dynasty and, after his grandfather of the same name (1654 - 1715), the most important figure in that family's long publishing history. Johannes II's father was Gerard van Keulen (1678 - 1726). Like his father and grandfather, Johannes II was appointed hydrographer to the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie / United Dutch East India Company), inheriting the position on his father's 1726 death. He was elevated to chief VOC cartographer in 1743. In the next year, 1744, Jan Harmenszoon de Marre (1696 - 1763), Examiner of the Amsterdam Chamber of the VOC, was ordered to work with Johannes II to compile a new volume of the trademark van Keulen Zee-Fakkel, based upon manuscript nautical charts of the East Indies and East Asia long kept secret by the VOC. This work, published in 1753 as volume 6 of the Zee-Fakkel, was the first printing of the VOC's most tightly guarded secrets. The work was not intended for public sale, rather, it was meant to consolidate and improve upon the older, often contradictory, VOC manuscript charts. It became known as the 'Secret Atlas', as its use was restricted to VOC pilots who were issued the volume at the outset of a voyage, and expected to surrender it on the return. Although any VOC official, including van Keulen, with access to the atlas was placed under bonds of secrecy, data did eventually leak. Many of the maps, superior to anything previously obtainable, laid the foundation for subsequent charts published by English, French, and other Dutch cartographers. When Johannes II died, the business passed to his son, Gerard Hulst van Keulen (1733 - 1801).   Further Details...

Juan de Siscara Ibáñez (Císcara, Siscarra; May 22, 1633 - December 23, 1690) was a Spanish engineer, primarily known for his design of fortresses in Spanish held territories in America. Native to Madrid, he in 1663 was posted to Santiago de Cuba as an engineer. Named Chief Engineer of Cuba and Florida, he would plan the new intramuros of Santiago de Cuba, plotting out as well refinements to the city grid in 1668 and 1669. In 1674, he began the execution of a long-planned defensive wall for Havana; the wall facing the entrance to the harbor was completed in 1680; by 1688 this would include the land-facing wall separating the city from its landward suburbs. Meanwhile, he was sent to St. Augustine, Florida, to assist in the design of the Spanish Castillo de San Marcos. He is associated with no printed maps directly: a 1691 manuscript plan of Havana is attributed to him, which either contradicts his assumed date of death, or reflects a later revision by a different hand.   Further Details...

Condition

Excellent.

References

OCLC 1177079404. Cueto, E., Cuba in Old Maps, no. 168. Sagra, Ramón de la, Historia física, política y natural de la isla de Cuba. Primera parte, Historia física y política. Tomo II, Comercio Marítimo, rentas y gastos, Fuerza Armada, apéndice, (Paris : En libreria de Arthus Bertrand, 1842)