Les Indes Orientales et leur Archipel

1770

Original hand-coloured copper engraving on paper

Print size: 13.5 x 18.75 in (34 x 47.5 cm)
Sheet size: 15.25 x 20.75 in (38.5 x 53 cm)
Folded size: 15.16 x 11.22 in (38.5 x 28.5 cm)

A refined Enlightenment-era delineation of India and the maritime world of Southeast Asia, executed by France’s Royal Hydrographer at the height of his cartographic authority

Rigobert Bonne’s Les Indes Orientales et leur Archipel, engraved in 1770 for Jean Lattré’s Atlas Moderne, represents one of the most lucid French renderings of the Indian Ocean theatre in the decades preceding the dominance of scientific triangulation. Covering a vast maritime zone—from the Bay of Bengal to the Philippines, Java, Sumatra, Siam, Tonkin, and the Straits of Malacca—the plate articulates Southeast Asia not merely as a geographical continuum, but as an arena of intensifying commercial and imperial contestation.

Bonne’s disciplined Enlightenment style is immediately evident. In contrast to the heavily ornamented productions of the preceding century, his work privileges proportion, legibility, and controlled line, reflecting his role as Hydrographe du Roi. Yet the map remains firmly situated within metropolitan visual culture: a finely engraved allegorical cartouche presents the region as a sphere of commerce and exchange, subtly invoking European fascination with the wealth of the “Spice Islands” and the mercantile circuits of the East.

On the Indian side, the Coromandel and Malabar coasts appear with increasing accuracy, shaped by sustained Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British presence. Ceylon (Sri Lanka) is crisply defined, while the Bay of Bengal—long the hinge of global trade—is positioned as the maritime heart of the plate. Particularly notable is Bonne’s treatment of the strategic Singapore passage, with the Strait labelled in its early form as “Sin Captura,” a striking example of pre-modern European nomenclature at one of Asia’s most important chokepoints.

Burma, Siam, and Cochinchina are carefully structured, their internal divisions reflecting a transitional political geography, while the archipelagic world beyond Malacca is rendered with clarity suited to both navigation and encyclopaedic curiosity. The map is especially valued for its clean integration of coastal hydrography with inland geography, balancing maritime utility with the informational ambitions of Enlightenment France.

For collectors of early Asian and Indian Ocean cartography, this is a key example of Bonne’s pivotal role in shifting French mapmaking decisively toward empirical precision, while still preserving the allegorical language of global commerce that defined eighteenth-century European visions of the East.

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