First edition, first state of Thevenot’s fundamental map of Australia. This is the first printed map to focus on Australia and a cornerstone of any collection focusing on exploration or the new continent.

Melchisedec Thevenot was a French traveller, scientist, inventor, writer and diplomat. Born to wealth and privilege, he served as French ambassador to Genoa in 1647 and to Rome in the 1650s. In 1684, eight years before his death, he became Royal Librarian to Louis XIV.

In 1663, he published the first part of his “Relation de divers Voyages Curieux”, a translation of multiple journeys, both maritime and terrestrial which shaped the geography of the world. The work was finally completed posthumously in 1696 after it had grown to four volumes. The full version of the work was illustrated with eleven maps, of which this map of Australia is the most well-known and influential.

This map is the first commercially available map of focusing on Australia. Geographically, it is based on Joan Blaeu’s map of 1659. Blaeu was the official geographer to the VOC or Dutch East India Company and he had by far the best access to the most accurate geographical information at the time. The source map actually depicted the East Indian Archipelago including Australia. It integrated all of the principal Dutch voyages to the area, from the first made by Willem Janszoon in 1605-6 to Abel Tasman’s two voyages of 1642-3 and 1644. These last voyages surveyed much of the western and northwestern coast and reached the southern tip of Tasmania, which was named van Diemen’s Land, after the Dutch Governor General of the Dutch East Indies. During these same voyages, he also discovered a small section of the west coast of New Zealand shown on the map on the lower right corner.

Before his map of 1659, Blaeu had also included Australia on his double hemisphere wall map of the world published in 1648. This same map was also inlaid as a marble floor of the former Amsterdam Town Hall. This masterpiece was heavily damaged by normal use as a floor and in 1746, the town authorities commissioned replacement parts for the damage from Jacob Martenesz. Somehow, although the replacement marble tiles were made, the installation was never completed. It was not until 1953 that the damaged parts were replaced.

Although Thevenot’s map is fundamentally the same shape as that of Blaeu, there is several additions. Of particular note is the vertical scale line drawn prominently in the centre of the map. This is drawn 135 degrees east, which is also the western limit of the old Treaty of Tordesillas, which established Spanish dominion in the Pacific. It is notable that the continent has been clearly divided into two separate entities; west of this line, is “Nova Hollandia” with several notes of Dutch activity and the achievements of the their explorers; east of the line is “Terra Australis” and has been left vague and undefined. This was also coincidentally, a Spanish possession according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. Spain and France had just concluded the Franco-Spanish War of 1635-59 and it has been speculated that Thevenot, by making this deliberate division, was encouraging the fledgling French East India Company to occupy and settle a region which until recently had been enemy territory. It is to be noted that when the British were establishing New South Wales in 1788, this same line was used to delineate its western boundary and the name New Holland for the western half of the continent survived for several decades.

The influence of this map was enormous, with this model being used to depict the continent until Cook’s surveys published in the 1770s; the provocative possible geo-political division was omitted almost immediately.

Thevenot’s work was very popular and was issued several times throughout both his lifetime and posthumously. This has led to several different versions or “states” of this map. Some of the differences between them are very small, such as typographic errors on the scale and the earlier versions do not have a compass rose, rhumb lines or the Tropic of Capricorn. The last version of the map adds Tasman’s route.

Our example of the map is the first edition issued in 1663. [AUNZ2988]