1759 Bellin Map of the Caroline Islands (Indigenous knowledge, New Phillippines)

From pebbes in the sand to cartography.

This is a 1759 Dutch-edition of Jacques-Nicolas Bellin's map of the Caroline Islands, preserving geographical knowledge provided by indigenous Carolinian voyagers who were stranded in the Philippines in 1696. Its conspicuous numbers measure distance and island size in days of sailing, carrying an indigenous maritime understanding of the archipelago into European print. Published with French and Dutch titles, the map descends from the account and sketch communicated by the Jesuit Paul Klein, rather than from a European survey of the islands.

A Closer Look

The eastern coasts of Samar and Mindanao anchor the left margin, with the northern Moluccas extending below them to Gilolo (Halmahera). Eastward, the Caroline Islands form elongated chains and sweeping arcs across an otherwise empty sea. Latitude is graduated from approximately 17 degrees north to 2 degrees south, but longitude is absent. Pink, yellow, green, and blue distinguish individual islands, while closely engraved horizontal hachures give their shores a dark fringe.

The numerical annotations are the map's most consequential feature. Numbers between islands record the reported days required to sail from one to another; those within islands indicate the days needed to sail around them. Thus, Panlog, representing Palau, carries the unusually large figure of 30, while numerous smaller islands have figures of 1 or 2. These are measures of local voyaging experience, not soundings or conventional linear distances.

The attempt to place this information within a European geographical framework produces substantial distortions. Panlog appears as a single large island immediately east of the Philippines, while other islands extend implausibly toward and below the equator. Piguela, near the Moluccas, and Fayo, at the northern extremity, reproduce conspicuous placements in the earlier Klein map. Individual islets within atolls also become separate islands in the transcription. These distortions should not be taken as a direct measure of Carolinian navigational competence: the printed map records information that was elicited, interpreted, and rearranged by European intermediaries and forced into a model it was never meant to accommodate.

From Pebbles to Copperplate

The map's underlying encounter occurred in December 1696, when a group of indigenous Carolinian islanders blown off course between Lamotrek and Fais reached Samar in the Philippines. The Jesuit missionary Paul Klein (Pablo Clain; 1652 - 1717) gathered information about their homeland and communicated it to his Jesuit superiors in 1697. The islanders represented their geographical knowledge with an arrangement of 87 pebbles, providing names and sailing distances that Klein dutifully copied. Klein's account and map subsequently circulated in European publications - as here. Bellin's version belongs to this earlier cartographic lineage. Its arrangement closely follows the Klein map reproduced in the Lettres édifiantes, including the distinctive island arcs and numerical annotations. The title's New Philippines designation preserves the terminology under which these islands entered the missionary literature.

Publication History and Census

This undated plate was published in volume 18 of Antoine François Prévost's Historische Beschryving der Reizen, issued in Amsterdam by J. Hayman and associated publishers in 1759. The French title, Carte des Nouvelles Philippines, is followed by its Dutch equivalent. The lower-left signature credits the direction of Jacob van der Schley (1715 - 1779), the Amsterdam draftsman and engraver associated with the Dutch voyage collection. Prévost's work and this map are well represented institutionally but frequently misunderstood or dismissed.

Cartographers

Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703 - March 21, 1772) was one of the most important cartographers of the 18th century. With a career spanning some 50 years, Bellin is best understood as geographe de cabinet and transitional mapmaker spanning the gap between 18th and early-19th century cartographic styles. His long career as Hydrographer and Ingénieur Hydrographe at the French Dépôt des cartes et plans de la Marine resulted in hundreds of high quality nautical charts of practically everywhere in the world. A true child of the Enlightenment Era, Bellin's work focuses on function and accuracy tending in the process to be less decorative than the earlier 17th and 18th century cartographic work. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Bellin was always careful to cite his references and his scholarly corpus consists of over 1400 articles on geography prepared for Diderot's Encyclopedie. Bellin, despite his extraordinary success, may not have enjoyed his work, which is described as "long, unpleasant, and hard." In addition to numerous maps and charts published during his lifetime, many of Bellin's maps were updated (or not) and published posthumously. He was succeeded as Ingénieur Hydrographe by his student, also a prolific and influential cartographer, Rigobert Bonne.   Further Details...

Jacob van der Schley  (July 26, 1715 - February 12, 1779) was a Dutch engraver and draftsman based in Amsterdam whose work for the 18th-century book trade included a substantial body of maps, coastal charts, town plans, and topographical views. Born in Amsterdam, he studied from about the age of twelve under Bernard Picart (1673 - 1733), whose engraving style he subsequently imitated, and completed unfinished plates after his master's death. His principal cartographic contribution was to the Hague editions of Antoine François Prévost's (1697 - 1763) Histoire générale des voyages and its Dutch counterpart, Historische beschryving der reizen, published by Pieter de Hondt (1696 - 1764), also known as Pierre de Hondt. For these publications, he engraved maps after Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703 - 1772), translating geographical compilations into copperplate rather than undertaking original surveys. Surviving examples include a chart of the southern Atlantic published in 1747, a map of Madagascar dated 1747, and a map of Cartagena, Santa Marta, and Venezuela published about 1758. His plates frequently combine French and Dutch titles, and some identify his role with the inscription 'direxit', indicating supervision of their production rather than necessarily the personal engraving of every plate. Alongside this geographical work, Schley produced portraits, book illustrations, and vignettes; his memorial portrait of Picart, dated 1734, documents his continuing connection with his teacher's artistic legacy. He also taught the engraver and art dealer Philippus van der Schley (1724 - 1817). Schley died in Amsterdam in 1779.   Further Details...

Source

Prévost, Antoine François, ed., Historische Beschryving der Reizen, of, Nieuwe en volkome Verzameling van de aller-waardigste en zeldsaamste Zee- en Landtogten, vol. 18, (Amsterdam: J. Hayman et al., 1759).    

Condition

Excellent.

References

Suárez, Thomas, Early Mapping of the Pacific, 2004. Riesenberg, Saul H., 'The Ghost Islands of the Carolines', Micronesica, vol. 11, no. 1, July 1975, pp. 11 - 13, fig. 2. Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa, BMDB20240218294. Related 1761 edition.