1784 Vaugondy Map of the World on Mercator Projection

This uncommon 1784 map of the world on a Mercator projection by Robert de Vaugondy occupies the ephemeral period between Captain Cook's second and third voyages. Cooks explorations along the eastern coast of Australia as well as around New Caledonia and are in evidence while his later work in the Pacific, including his important exploration of American northwestern coastline, is noticeably absent. Instead the northwest coast of America is loosely ghosted in with minor inland notations regarding the fictional discoveries of Admiral de Fonte.

Barthlomew de Fonte was supposedly a Spanish Admiral who, sailing up the Pacific coast c. 1640 discovered a series of gigantic lakes, seas, and rivers heading eastward towards the Hudson Bay. Upon one of these great inland lakes he met with a ship from Boston that claimed to have come through a Northwestern Passage. De Fonte's story appeared in a short lived 1706 English publication entitled 'Memoirs of the Curious.' The story inspired no less than Joseph-Nicholas de L'Isle, younger brother of the better known Guilleme de L'Isle. Joseph-Nicholas was at the time employed by the Russian Tzar Peter the Great in the compilation of Russian surveys and discoveries in Siberia and the extreme northeast of Asia. When he published his somewhat accurate map of northeast Asia, he paradoxically decided to include on the same page an entirely speculative map of North America based largely on De Fonte's letter. De L'Isle's mantle was later taken up by Jefferys, another ardent supporter of the Northwest Passage theory, who incuded De Fonte's discoveries in his own map of the region, which was, ultimately, the inspiration for this map by Vaugondy.

Elsewhere on this map Tasmania or Van Dimenians land is erroneously attached to the Australian mainland. Similarly, between Korea and Kamtschatka, Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, is attached to Sakhalin – a common error of the period.

This map typically appears in one of three color schemes designed to illustrated either world religious, skin tone, or race. This particular example is colorized to emphasize the predominance of various skin tones in different parts of the world. Whites (les Blancos) are represented by green, brown skin (les Bruns) are identified by red, yellow skin (les Juanatres) by yellow, and olive skin (les Olivatres) by light green.

Published by Robert de Vaugondy in the 1784 eidition of his Nouvel Atlas Portatif.

Cartographer

Robert de Vaugondy (fl. c. 1716 - 1786) was a French publishing firm run by Gilles (1688 - 1766) and Didier (c. 1723 - 1786) Robert de Vaugondy. They were map publishers, engravers, and cartographers active in Paris during the mid-18th century. Gilles was the nephew of Pierre Moulard Sanson, and was thus the inheritor of Nicolas Sanson (1600 - 1667), whose stock supplied much of their initial material and whose legacy supplied much of their initial reputation. Graduating from Sanson's maps, Gilles, and more particularly Didier, began to produce their own substantial corpus. The Vaugondys were well-respected for the detail and accuracy of their maps, for which they capitalized on the resources of 18th-century Paris to compile the most accurate and fantasy-free maps possible. The Vaugondys compiled each map based on their own geographic knowledge, scholarly research, journals of contemporary explorers and missionaries, and direct astronomical observation. Moreover, unlike many cartographers of this period, they took pains to reference their sources. Nevertheless, even in 18th-century Paris, geographical knowledge was limited - especially regarding those unexplored portions of the world, including the poles, the Pacific Northwest of America, and the interiors of Africa, Australia, and South America. This gap in knowledge let to divergent geographical approaches, epitomized by the Buache-Vaugondy debates at the French Academie des Sciences - one of the key pivotal moments in the history of modern cartography. Buache, in his Exposé, argued for a Theoretical Geography, which postulated that a systematic and scientific approach could accurately fill in the map in advance of actual exploration. Vaugondy's scathing critique of the Exposé, presented as the Considerations, argued for empirical restraint in cartography, suggesting that unexplored areas should simply be left blank and that mapping itself should rely on documentable current discovery. While Bucahe, with more political acumen and connections, initially came out ahead in the debates, the subsequent decades saw voyages of discovery by Captains James Cook, Jean Francois de Galaup de La Perouse, and George Vancouver disprove most of his map. Nonetheless, by that time, Vaugondy, advanced in age, did not live long enough to see his approach become ascendant. Didier died more celebrated than solvent, and his maps were acquired by Jean-Baptiste Fortin, who in 1787 sold them to Charles-François Delamarche (1740 - 1817). Delamarche, more businessman than cartographer, prospered from the Vaugondy maps, but defrauded Vaugondy's widow, Marie Louise Rosalie Dangy, of her rightful inheritance and may even have killed her.   Further Details...

Source

Robert de Vaugondy, G., Nouvel Atlas Portatif, (Paris) 1784.    

Condition

Very good. Minor mat-burn. Old framing tape on verso.

References

Pedley, Mary Sponberg. Bel et Utile: The Work of the Robert de Vaugondy Family of Mapmakers. 15.