Pascaerte van ‘t Westelyckste Deel van Oost Indien, van Cabo de Bona Esperanca tot C.Comorin..

Description

This is one of the grandest sea charts to emerge from Amsterdam’s Golden Age of maritime publishing: Pieter Goos’s magnificent pascaerte (nautical chart) of the western Indian Ocean, covering the trade arc from the Cape of Good Hope northward along the East African coast, across the seas of Madagascar, Arabia, and Persia, to the Malabar Coast of India.

Published as part of Goos’s celebrated Zee-Atlas ofte Water-Wereld, the most important Dutch sea atlas of the later seventeenth century, it is one of the most visually compelling representations of the Indian Ocean world produced in this period.

The Map in Detail

The geography of this chart is comprehensive: along the left edge runs the coast from Egypt (Egypten) through Abyssinia (Abis[sinia]) and the length of East Africa (including Mozambique, Mombaza, Melinde) curving around to the Cape of Good Hope (El Cabo de Bona Esperanca) in the lower right. Across the upper portion stretches Arabia Felix and Yemen, with Persia and Hormuz beyond. The Malabar Coast, Deccan, and Goa crowd the upper left, while Madagascar fills the center of the chart, surrounded by the scatter of Indian Ocean islands.

The chart is presented in exceptional hand color: Arabia washed in pink, Madagascar and the East African littoral in warm ochres and greens, the seas left open for the navigator’s eye. Two fully rigged sailing ships ride the open ocean; a compass rose anchors the right side. The title cartouche features African figures in turbans and sashes, shielded by parasols, flanking a radiant sun.

Historical Context

The chart depicts the central artery of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which by the 1660s had supplanted Portugal as the dominant maritime power in the Indian Ocean. The route charted here, around the Cape of Good Hope and northeast to the Malabar Coast and beyond, was the VOC’s highway to the spice islands. The ports named on this chart were the waypoints, watering places, and trading posts that sustained the seventeenth century’s greatest commercial enterprise: the Cape itself, Madagascar, Mozambique, Mombasa, Hormuz, and the ports of western India.

Pieter Goos first published his Zee-Atlas in 1666 at his shop on the Amsterdam waterfront: the Vergulde Zee Spiegel, or Golden Sea Mirror. It quickly became the standard maritime atlas of its age. Goos’s charts were so prized that they were commonly bound alongside Blaeu’s monumental Atlas Maior as a complement to its land-based geography. Goos’s sea charts, in their combination of navigational rigor and visual richness, represent the highest achievement of the Dutch cartographic tradition applied to the sea.

Publication History and Census

This chart was published by Pieter Goos (1616–1675) as part of his Zee-Atlas ofte Water-Wereld, first issued in Amsterdam in 1666. The atlas ran through some twenty editions between 1666 and 1683, continued after Goos’s death in 1675 by his widow and subsequently by his son Hendrik.