Carte Reduite des Terres Australes. Supposed east coast. Bellin c1753

by Bellin, Jacques Nicolas

Australia antique map. Wrong east coast. Reduced Chart of Southern Lands. Carte Reduite des Terres Australes pour servir a l’histoire des voyages. Par le Sr Bellin Ing. De la Marine. De la Societe Royale de Londres &ca  1753.
Original copperplate-engraved map by Jacques Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772) for Prevost’s L’Histoire Generale des Voyages (General History of Voyages) published in Paris circa 1753. This map is the best-known inaccurate early map of Australia, and is one only a few eighteenth century maps to show Australia by itself.

Appointed hydrographer to the French Navy when 18 years old, Bellin became director of the Department of Charts, Plans & Journals of the Ministry of the Navy, head of the French Hydrographic Department, Official Hydrographer to the French King, Louis XIV and Royal Censor of the Naval Academy. As a Marine Hydrographic Engineer Bellin was appointed a member of the Royal Society of London. His best known maps were for his Petit Atlas Maritime (Small Maritime Atlas) c1764, and maps for l’Abbe Prevost’s Historie Generale des Voyages published between 1746 and 1757. Bellin’s maps were finely engraved and accurate (where lands had been charted), but he is perhaps better known today for his creativity, as a founder of the French school of theoretical cartography.

This is an important map of Nouvelle Hollande (New Holland) - named by the Dutch in the 17th century. Published nearly 20 years prior to James Cook’s discovery of the east coast in 1770, Bellin's theories of the east coast of Australia are shown by a dotted line joining Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) to Espiritu Santu (New Hebrides/Vanuatu) and Papua New Guinea and New Britain. (In French) along this dotted line Bellin wrote: "I suppose that the land of Diemen could join with the land of the Holy Ghost but (this is) without proof".

In fine condition, with wide margins, and central vertical fold to accommodate publication, to its border this fine map measures 20 x 37.5cm (approximately 8 x 15 inches)