The Peninsula on this side Ganges

Circa 1688–1695

Steel engraving on paper

7.75 x 5.75 in (19.5 x 14.5 cm)

The Peninsula on This Side the Ganges: Robert Morden’s Pocket Map of India from Geography Rectified

This compact engraved map of India, titled The Peninsula On This Side Ganges, was issued by Robert Morden within his influential geographical handbook Geography Rectified, one of the most widely read English geographies of the late seventeenth century. Engraved as page 423, the map was conceived not as an elite atlas plate but as an integral component of a practical, didactic text intended for educated readers.

The map presents the subcontinent from the Indus eastward to the Ganges and south to Ceylon, combining relatively confident coastal delineation with a schematic interior. Major ports and maritime regions—Goa, the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, Cambaia, and Bengal—are clearly identified, reflecting the seaborne commercial and informational networks through which English geographic knowledge of India was formed. Rivers function as principal organising features, with the Ganges operating as a conceptual boundary, explicitly articulated in the title itself.

Morden’s approach prioritises clarity, legibility, and utility over decorative flourish. Early hand-colouring heightens regional distinction while preserving the map’s instructional character. As a book map embedded within a popular geography, it offers a rare insight into how India was encountered by English readers before the advent of systematic Company surveys and scientific cartography. Surviving examples are valued for their modest scale, bibliographic specificity, and historical importance as precursors to the more analytical mapping of India that would emerge in the eighteenth century.

Morden (England, c.1688–95) vs. Bertius & Langenes (Amsterdam, 1618)

When compared with the three celebrated miniature maps of Ceylon, Cambaia, and Malabar published by Petrus Bertius after Barent Langenes in Tabularum Geographicarum Contractarum Libri Septem, Morden’s map marks a clear shift in cartographic intent and audience.

The Bertius–Langenes plates, engraved in Amsterdam in 1618, represent the high refinement of Dutch miniature atlas cartography: region-specific, densely engraved, and orientated toward a pan-European market shaped by Dutch mercantile and colonial expansion. Their focus on discrete coastal zones—Ceylon, the Gulf of Cambaia, and the Malabar coast—reflects a segmented, maritime conception of India rooted in trade and navigation.

By contrast, Morden’s English map collapses these regional fragments into a single, simplified vision of the subcontinent. It is less decorative and less regionally precise but conceptually broader. Intended for readers rather than collectors, it reflects an English geographical imagination still consolidating knowledge, privileging coherence and accessibility over detail. Seen together, the works chart a transition from early-seventeenth-century Dutch commercial cartography to late-seventeenth-century English didactic geography—two distinct European ways of knowing India before the age of scientific survey.

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