INDEX

WHO DID DISCOVER AUSTRALIA?

COLONIAL EXPLORATION

The Discovery of Australia: Ancient and historic maps relating to Australia

16th Century

As far as European map makers of the 16th century were concerned, Australia was an unknown quanity. It was commonly believed that a Great Southland existed somewhere to the south of the islands of the East Indies but no one knew quite where. It was in the first half of the 16th century that the Portuguese are believed to have explored the sections of Australia's north and east coasts. Though no official records remain of such voyages, they almost surely did take place as bits and pieces of the coastline began to appear on maps of the world as the century progressed.

FRANCESCO ROSSSELLI (1448-1513)
Early Florentine engraver, illuminator and painter, brother of Cosimo Rosselli. He apparently trained as an illuminator; in 1470 he was paid for three historiated initials for a Gradual for Siena Cathedral. In 1480 Francesco was in Hungary, possibly working for Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary and a great patron of books and manuscripts. By 1482 he was apparently back in Florence. He may have fallen under the influence of the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola in the 1490s (Brockhaus). He was recorded in Venice in 1505, and again in 1508, when he attended a lecture given by Luca Pacioli on Euclid.

 DAUPHIN MAPS/DIEPPE MAPS, Dieppe, 1536-66

  • Between 1536 and 1566, a series of maps of the world were published by various cartographers in the French town of Dieppe, a centre for map production in Europe. The first is known as the Dauphin map as it was given to the the Dauphin, the Crown Prince of France as a gift. The section of the map depicting the Far East is the part of interest to us, as it includes a section of coastline that had never appeared on maps of the world before, that of a land mass south of Java called Jave La Grande (redraw of Dauphin map), right where Australia appears on modern maps. Immediately to the south is Lytil Jave (Little Java). The cartographer who drew the clearly believed it represented Marco Polo's great south land, as it places the newly charted land exactly where Marco Polo described it as being.
    During the 20 year period after the Dauphin map was published, 10 other maps of the world which appear to be based on either the 1536 Dauphin map or the charts from which the 1536 additions to the Far East sector were made, were published by various Dieppe cartographers.
  • Harleyan's Dauphin Map of 1547
  • Java-La-Grande, 1530 & Terra Del Zur, 1628 (redraw of Dauphin map)

PAOLO FORLANI
Venetian compilers, Engravers, Printers or Publishers. Among Venice's leading mapmakers was Paolo Forlani, who is unusual in that he was one of the few to combine the talent of mapmaking and engraving, while also infrequently acting as a publisher and mapseller. He was much-sought after as an engraver and mapmaker, particularly as he was adept at the difficult art of engraving lettering. Consequently, he was employed by four of the leading publishers of the period to prepare maps for them: Giovanni Francesco Camocio, Ferrando Bertelli and Bolgnini Zaltieri from Venice, and Claudio Duchetti from Rome. He was only one among many engravers and draughtsmen employed by this industry, which produced huge numbers of maps of all parts of the world. In consequence, Venice was remarkably well served for images of itself. Further info.

ANDRÉ THEVET 1516-1592
Thevet was French Franciscan Brother and chaplain of his state who was well travelled in the Americas. He is remembered as an historian and writer. In 1555, he embarked on a galleon to Costa Rica. Queen Catherine de Médicis gave him the responsibility to deport protestants to colonize the new colonies of "Antarctic France", located at Orinoco basin alongside Marañon (cashew's name) river. He reported everything he saw in detail incluiding the smoking of tobacco which he introduced to France in 1556.

HEINRICH BUENTING 1545-1606
A German preacher and Protestant senior minister who rewrote the Bible as an Illustrated Travel Book. The map here is one of ten maps in Buenting's Itinerariun Sacrae Scripturae, or Travels according to the Scriptures and is typical of late sixteenth century Crusader maps, insofar as geographical accuracy is conspicuously subordinated to design.

GERARD MERCATOR 1512-94
For nearly sixty years, during the most important and exciting period in the story of modern map making, Gerard Mercator was the supreme cartographer, his name, second only to Ptolemy, synonymous with the form of map projection still in use today. Although not the inventor of this type of projection he was the first to apply it to navigational charts in such a form that compass bearings could be plotted on charts in straight lines, thereby providing seamen with a solution to an age-old problem of navigation at sea. His influence transformed land surveying and his researches and calculations led him to break away from Ptolemy's conception of the size and outline of the Continents, drastically reducing the longitudinal length of Europe and Asia and altering the shape of the Old World as visualized in the early sixteenth century.
Mercator was born in Rupelmonde in Flanders and studied in Louvain under Gemma Frisius, Dutch writer, astronomer and mathematician. He established himself there as a cartographer and instrument and globe maker, and when he was twenty-five drew and engraved his first map (of Palestine) and went on to produce a map of Flanders (1540) supervising the surveying and completing the drafting and engraving himself. The excellence of his work brought him the patronage of Charles V for whom he constructed a globe, but in spite of his favor with the Emperor he was caught up in the persecution of Lutheran protestants and charged with heresy, fortunately without serious consequences. No doubt the fear of further persecution influenced his move in 1552 to Duisburg, where he continued the production of maps, globes and instruments culminating in large-scale maps of Europe (1554), the British Isles (1564) and the famous World Map on 18 sheets drawn to his new projection (1569). All these early maps are exceedingly rare, some being known by only one copy.
In later life he devoted himself to his edition of the maps in Ptolemy's Geographia, reproduced in his own engraving as nearly as possible in their original form, and to the preparation of his 3-volume collection of maps to which, for the first time, the word 'Atlas' was applied. The word was chosen, he wrote, 'to honour the Titan, Atlas, King of Mauritania, a learned philosopher, mathematiciar, and astronomer' . The first two parts of the Atlas were published in 1585 and 1589 and the third, with the first two making a complete edition, in 1595 the year after Mercator's death.
Mercator's sons and grandsons, named above, were all cartographers and made their contributions in various ways to the great atlas. Rumold, in particular, was responsible for the complete edition in 1595. After a second complete edition in 1602, the map plates were bought in 1604 by Jodocus Hondius who, with his sons, Jodocus II and Henricus, published enlarged editions which dominated the map market for the following twenty to thirty years.

ABRAHAM ORTELIUS 1528-98
Abraham Ortel, better known as Ortelius, was born in Antwerp and after studying Greek, Latin and mathematics set up business there with his sister, as a book dealer and 'painter of maps'. Travelling widely, especially to the great book fairs, his business prospered and he established contacts with the literati in many lands. On one such visit to England, possibly seeking temporary refuge from religious persecution, he met William Camden whom he is said to have encouraged in the production of the Britannia.
A turning-point in his career was reached in 1564 with the publication of a World Map in eight sheets of which only one copy is known: other individual maps followed and then - at the suggestion of a friend - he gathered together a collection of maps from contacts among European cartographers and had them engraved in uniform size and issued in 1570 as the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Atlas of the Whole World). Although Lafreri and others in Italy had published collections of 'modern' maps in book form in earlier years, the Theatrum was the first uniformly sized, systematic collection of maps and hence can be called the first atlas, although that term itself was not used until twenty years later by Mercator.
The Theatrum, with most of its maps elegantly engraved by Frans Hogenberg, was an instant success and appeared in numerous editions in different languages including addenda issued from time to time incorporating the latest contemporary knowledge and discoveries. The final edition appeared in 1612. Unlike many of his contemporaries Ortelius noted his sources of information and in the first edition acknowledgement was made to eighty-seven different cartographers.
Apart from the modern maps in his major atlas, Ortelius himself compiled a series of historical maps known as the Parergon Theatri which appeared from 1579 onwards, sometimes as a separate publication and sometimes incorporated in the Theatrum.

GEORGE BEST
Sailed with Sir Martin Frobisher (1535-1594) English navigator on his second voyage to the Arctic, carried out in 1577. Best took part in it as lieutenant of the commander-in-chief. In 1578, Frobisher was chosen by Queen Elizabeth to lead expeditions in the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. The narratives of his voyages, first published in 1578, have passed through several editions. "The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher" by George Best was edited from the original 1578 text by Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1937).

  • Map of the World, George Best, 1578
    The map was drawn upon completion of Frobisher's second Artic expedition, of which Best was a member. Australian gets no mention.

PETRUS PLANCIUS 1552-1622
Plancius was a theologian and minister of the Dutch Reformed Church who fled with many of his compatriots from religious persecution in Flanders to settle in Amsterdam in 1585. There he became interested in navigation and cartography and, being fortunate enough to have access to nautical charts recently brought from Portugal, he was soon recognized as an expert on the shipping routes to India. He was interested, too, in the idea of a North East passage until the failure of Willem Barentsz's third voyage in 1597 seemed to preclude the possibility of such a route. In 1602 he was appointed cartographer to the new Dutch East India Company.
Although Plancius produced no atlases his individual maps and charts, over 100 in all, exercised much influence on the work of other cartographers at the turn of the century. His very large wall map of the world dated 1592 was of particular significance.

  • "Orbis Terrarum Typus" 1594.
    This fine world map in double-hemispheres, originally sold as a separate publication, was adopted as the general map for post-1596 editions of Linschoten's Itinerario. Virtually all surviving examples of the map were bound into that work. This map lays claim as the progenitor of the elaborate bordered map, creating an entire genre of aesthetic approach lasting for over a century. Plancius borrowed illustrations from Theodore de Bry's Voyages, forming them into a fine tapestry surrounding the hemispheres, both embellishing the map and providing depictions of some of the world's people and fauna.

THEODORE DE BRY
Born in Liege in 1528 to well-to-do Protestant parents, he lived in Liege until the 1560s, when he fled to Strasbourg to avoid the Alvan persecution. In Strasbourg, de Bry opened a goldsmith shop and also worked as an engraver, particularly of heraldic emblems. His skill as an engraver served him well but it was only late in his life that de Bry turned his attention and considerable skill as an engraver toward illustrating and reprinting works concerning the New World. The initial inspiration came from Richard Hakluyt, author of The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English nation, friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, and Elizabethan nationalist who was always eager to celebrate English navigation and promote British expansion overseas. On his first journey to England in 1586/7, de Bry met Hakluyt, whose long-time interest had been to make available the works of New World explorers to the English public.

GIROLAMO BENZONI
Italian seafarer and friend of Christoper Columbus who, at the age of twenty-two, left his native Milan to seek adventure in the New World. He travelled widely for fifteen years in territories throughout the parts of South and Central America conquered by the Spanish. He was informed about military, economic and political issues, all of which find their way into his work. Though Benzoni returned to Europe in 1556, his work "History of the New World" was not published until 1565. The work quickly gained a wide readership, and was translated into Latin and published in Geneva in 1578 in his younger days participated in numerous trips to the Americas.

 RICHARD HAYLUYT 1552?-1616   
An English geographer. He graduated in 1574 from Oxford, where he later lectured on geography. A passionate interest in the history of discovery led him to collect and publish narratives of voyages and travels. He was active in promoting English discovery and colonization, especially in North America. His chief work, called by J. A. Froude "the prose epic of the English nation," is The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics, and Discoveries of the English Nation (3 vol., 1598-1600), an enlargement of a one-volume version (1589). The publication of narratives of early explorations has been continued by the Hakluyt Society, founded in 1846.

EMANUEL GODINHO DE EREDIA
de Eredia was in his day probably the leading cartographer, cosmographer, geographer and mathematician of East Asia, from Goa in the west to the Spice Islands, and north to China and Japan. He was the son of a Portuguese father and a Malayan princess, and educated by the Jesuits first at Malacca and then at Goa, the Portuguese enclave in India. His maps of these parts are well documented (Cortesão and da Mota, 1960).  Eredia also wrote a book, The Description of Malaca, with the manuscript dated 1613 (Eredia, 1613).  In it, along with fifty-six maps and drawings, he wrote a small chapter on Meridional India (South Indies) containing a detailed report on an island called Luca.Antara to which a journey was made in 1601.