This large spectacular map is present in Francis Rawdon Chesney’s account of his surveys of the River Euphrates in modern Iraq, with a view to promoting it as a navigable water link between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. Geographically, it covers modern-day Turkey, Egypt, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, western India and the Central Asian Republics east of the Caspian Sea.

Before he set out on his Herculean task, Chesney, a British military officer, travelled to Constantinople to conduct an inspection of Syria and Egypt. After he finished this tour, he wrote a report for the government, outlining the feasibility of digging a canal at Suez to establish a new route between England and India. Chesney's report inspired the French engineer and diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps to construct the Suez Canal in 1869.

Although Chesney had written a report praising the Suez route to India, he also wanted to test the possibility of an alternate route from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean via the River Euphrates. His proposal was seriously considered by the British government and ultimately a grant of 20,000GBP was made for an expedition to test Chesney's proposal. Part of these funds were used to purchase two small steam ships, the Tigris and the Euphrates.

The expedition set out from Malta in March 1835 towards the Bay of Antioch, where the steamers were assembled and tested. The steamers were launched on the Euphrates near Birecik in southern Turkey in March 1836, heading downriver towards Baghdad. Disaster struck on the 21st May when the steamer Tigris was lost in a freak storm (variously described as a hurricane, a tornado, or a sandstorm) which came out of nowhere and only lasted 12 minutes. It quickly became apparent to Chesney and the members of the expedition that while it was possible to sail on the River Euphrates at a slow, careful pace, the unpredictability of the river bottom, the frequent wetlands and marshes, and the unpredictable reactions from the local inhabitants to foreign activity made the establishment of a navigable commercial route impractical. Nevertheless, the remaining steamer, Euphrates, did successfully arrive in Baghdad, from where Chesney departed to India, leaving his second-in-command, James Bucknall Estcourt in charge. Estcourt ultimately declared the expedition over in 1837.

Chesney returned to England and was commissioned to write a report and account of the expedition. Due to several interruptions, including a spell as officer in command of the artillery in Hong Kong in 1843, the first part of his report was not published until 1850 and the additional volume was not finished until 1868.

This map was issued as part of the 1850 first edition of the work. It uses Chesney’s own notes, drawings and sources for the region, showing the overarching aim of his Expedition and the potential of the routes that could be followed between the Mediterranean and India. The River Euphrates is shown as an obvious link between the two. Chesney had travelled to the Middle East again in 1856 and 1862 to survey and negotiate for the Euphrates Valley, this time with a view of building a railway but again, the government was unsympathetic.

Alongside his own routes, Chesney also marks several other routes on the map, including those of William Francis Ainsworth, the expeditions' surgeon, and the mysterious Lieut. James Fitzjames, an illegitimate naval officer who brought back the first written reports of Chesney's expedition to London. To these are added the Marches of Alexander the Great, the campaigns of Cyrus the Great, and the Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks.

Original hand colour. [MEAST4705]