Descriptio Nova Imperii Malabar, Canara, Decan / Sinus Gangeticus Vulgo Golfo De Bengala Nova description, Amsterdam [Set of 2]
a) Philippus Baldeus
Descriptio Nova Imperii Malabar, Canara, Decan
Circa 1720s
Copper engraving on paper
Print size: 16 x 13 in (40.6 x 33 cm)
b) Johannes Janssonius
Sinus Gangeticus Vulgo Golfo De Bengala Nova description, Amsterdam
Circa 1695
Original hand-coloured copper engraving on paper
18.6 x 21.5 in (46.5 x 53.7 cm)
Philippus Baldaeus and Johannes Janssonius—From Cape Comorin to Bengal: A Paired Dutch Maritime Vision of Coastal India
a) This engraved maritime chart on laid paper, with radiating rhumb lines from a central compass rose; coastal soundings; place names along the Malabar littoral; inland mountain ranges and rivers; a large allegorical cartouche with classical figures at lower left; an engraved ship vignette at lower right; printed within a ruled border.
A finely engraved early maritime chart of the Malabar Coast, extending northward through Canara and the Deccan, produced at a time when India’s western seaboard was among the most commercially and strategically significant maritime corridors in the Indian Ocean world. The chart is organised around a bold central compass rose with radiating rhumb lines, underscoring its functional role as a navigational aid for long-distance seafaring. His work, Naauwkeurige Beschryvinge van Malabar en Choromandel....., is considered one of the foremost sources regarding Dutch settlements in southern India.
The coastline is rendered with careful attention to harbours, river mouths, headlands, and coastal settlements, while the interior is selectively articulated with mountain chains and hydrographic features, reflecting contemporary European geographic knowledge filtered through trade networks and colonial intelligence. The inclusion of soundings and anchorage indicators attests to its practical utility for merchants and navigators engaged in spice, textile, and bullion trade.
The map depicts western India from the southern tip up to Surat, including a portion of the Kathiawar peninsula. Numerous small towns are noted along the coastline and along the rivers, including Mumbai (Bombaia), Goa, Calicut, Cochin (Cotchyn), and Quilon (Coulan). The coastal area is divided into several regions: Malabar, Canara (Kanara) and Decan (Deccan). The map is embellished with a compass rose, a distance scale topped with measuring dividers and maps, and a decorative title cartouche flanked by three natives. The map was reissued in Churchill's A Collection of Voyages, which had the first English translation of the Baldaeus book.
A richly ornamented allegorical cartouche, populated by classical figures and martial motifs, reinforces the map’s imperial and commercial undertones, framing the region as both a strategic frontier and a zone of economic opportunity. An engraved ship vignette further amplifies the maritime identity of the work.
Charts of this type circulated among European trading powers operating in India — notably the Portuguese, Dutch, and English — and represent the fusion of cartographic science, navigation, and imperial ambition. A visually commanding and historically resonant survival of early modern Indian Ocean cartography.
b) This impressive Dutch maritime chart of the Bay of Bengal, titled Sinus Gangeticus Vulgo Golfo de Bengala, presents one of the most visually commanding early European representations of eastern India’s seaboard and the mouths of the River Ganges. Issued in Amsterdam in the late seventeenth century, the map reflects the Dutch Republic’s cartographic supremacy in the Indian Ocean world, where hydrographic knowledge was inseparable from commerce, navigation, and imperial ambition.
The coastline is rendered with the priorities of the sea-chart tradition: estuaries, coastal soundings, and navigable approaches take precedence over inland geography, while a dense rhumb-line network radiates across the Gulf, signalling its practical orientation for maritime use. The region’s strategic importance—linking Bengal’s riverine interior to global trade routes—is underscored by the chart’s focus on the Ganges delta, long recognised as one of Asia’s great commercial gateways.
A richly ornamented cartouche and scattered ship vignettes lend the engraving its characteristic Baroque authority, balancing navigational function with decorative presence. Within the canon of Dutch mapping of Mughal India, this chart stands as both a working instrument of oceanic connectivity and a cultural artefact of Europe’s visualisation of Bengal at the height of early modern global exchange.
In the illustrated arrangement, two seventeenth-century maritime charts are placed side by side to create a continuous coastal reading of the Indian peninsula. The smaller chart of Philippus Baldeus is positioned to the left, orientated vertically, showing the tapering southern extremity of India and the surrounding sea routes. Immediately beside it, the larger Johannes Janssonius's and more expansive chart occupies the right-hand side, opening outward into the Bay of Bengal and the eastern seaboard.
Together, the maps visually extend from the southern cape and offshore island groups across the broad maritime expanse of the Indian Ocean, linking the peninsula’s lower coastline with the eastern approaches of Bengal and the Gangetic delta. The eye moves naturally from the compact southern chart into the larger eastern chart, producing the effect of a joined hydrographic panorama — not a single printed map, but a complementary pairing that collectively conveys the full sweep of India’s southern and eastern maritime frontier.
The juxtaposition underscores how different European cartographers, working within related nautical traditions, mapped adjacent coastal zones as separate but interconnected theatres of navigation, trade, and imperial access. Displayed together, they reveal how European mapmakers constructed India not as a single bounded territory but as a connected maritime system — defined by coastlines, sea lanes, ports, and imperial exchange.
(Set of two)
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