Asien: Europa & Nordost-Afrika (Asia, Europe, Northeast Africa)

1880

Copperplate engraving with later colour printing

Print size: 13.5 x 17 in (34 x 43 cm)
Sheet size: 15.25 x 18.25 in (38.5 x 46.5 cm)

Asia and Adjacent Regions—A Late-Nineteenth-Century German Scientific Wall Map from Stieler’s Hand-Atlas

This large-format engraved map presents the Indian subcontinent within a scientifically unified vision of Asia, extending from the eastern Mediterranean to East Asia and from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. Produced for Stieler’s Hand-Atlas, it reflects the mature nineteenth-century German cartographic tradition at a moment when India occupied a central position in European geographic, imperial, and intellectual discourse.

India is rendered with exceptional clarity and density: the Himalayan chain is articulated through finely graded relief engraving; the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra systems are traced with hydrological precision; and the peninsula’s coastal contours, river deltas, and interior plateaus are delineated according to contemporary survey knowledge. Political boundaries and administrative divisions are indicated in restrained colour, corresponding to late nineteenth-century colonial configurations rather than modern national borders.

Published by Justus Perthes of Gotha, whose firm synthesised data from British, Russian, and continental survey sources, the map exemplifies the German scientific approach to cartography—analytical, comparative, and notably free from overt decorative rhetoric. India’s placement at the heart of the sheet underscores its role as a geographical and strategic hinge between West, Central, and East Asia.

Large, well-preserved Stieler plates remain highly desirable for their intellectual authority, technical refinement, and enduring relevance to the study of colonial-era representations of India.

Adolf Stieler (1775–1836) was a German cartographer whose Hand-Atlas (first issued 1817–1823) established new standards of scientific accuracy, clarity, and consistency in European atlas production. Following Stieler’s death, the atlas was systematically revised and expanded by the Justus Perthes Geographische Anstalt, Gotha, incorporating the latest geographical intelligence from explorers, surveys, and state mapping agencies. By the mid- to late nineteenth century, Stieler’s Hand-Atlas was widely regarded as the most authoritative general atlas in continental Europe, particularly influential in academic, administrative, and scientific circles.

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