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Asia - Jean-Baptiste Crépy + Jean-Baptiste Nolin,...

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Asia - Jean-Baptiste Crépy + Jean-Baptiste Nolin, 1781 RARE AND MONUMENTAL WALL MAP OF ASIA "L'Asie dressée sur les nouvelles observations faites en touttes [sic] les parties de la terre et rectifiées." Copper engraving by Jean-Baptiste Nolin, published in Paris by Jean-Baptiste Crépy in 1781 on 4 central sheets, plus borders. Mounted on linen. Size: approx. 126 x 140 cm. Nolin's map was produced at the junction of the decline of the Dutch dominance of world exploration and cartography and the rise of the British and French. The map consequently provides a fitting bridge between the two eras. Geographically, the map features the Asian continent, including an allegorical cartouche, a geographical and a historical description in the lower decorative border, and 30 vignettes on Asian history rendering an interesting mix of biblical history of Asia Minor, the Tartarian invasion of China, the Crusades with the Sieges of Damietta and Jerusalem etc.Cartographically the map is based upon the work of Nolin's father of the same name. It extends from the Mediterranean to New Guinea and the Japanese Kuril Islands, and from Spitzbergen to Northern Australia. The map is surrounded by elaborate decorative imagery including 30 decorative vignette medallions drawn from Greek, Roman, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic history. The extensive text along the lower margin features a Description Géographique de l'Asie and a Description Historique de l'Asie. In the upper left corner, an especially resplendent cartouche illustrates Jesuit priests evangelizing to the diverse peoples of the continent. While exhibiting extensive confidence and detail throughout, this map is heavily speculative with regards to unexplored territory. Greenland for example, extends eastward north of Spitsbergen almost as far as Nova Zembla, which itself is attached to the Asiatic mainland. India is exceptionally narrow following Nicolas Sanson's model of around 1690. The sea between Japan and Korea, whose name, nowadays either the "Sea of Korea", "east Sea", or the "Sea of Japan", is currently a matter of historical and political dispute between the countries and is here identified in favor of both countries, with both Mer et Golfe de Coree and Mer Septentrionale du Japon applied to the same sea. The map's most speculative sections are in East and Northeast Asia, where, despite being issued after the explorations of Vitus Bering, the cartography here dates to about 1740, due to the fact that Bering's information was not yet widely available outside of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Instead, the cartographer relies on early Dutch records relating to the voyage of Maarten Gerrtisz de Vries and Cornelis Jansz Coen. Here modern day Hokkaido ("Terre d'Yesso"), the southern parts of which are vaguely recognizable, is attached to the Yupi peninsula (Sakhalin). Several islands extending to the northeast, represent De Vries and Coen's discovery of the Japanese Kuril Islands of Kunashir (mapped somewhat accurately) and Iturup. De Vries and Coen's mapping of Iturup does not extend beyond the western shores, so the eastern part of the island remains blank. Some cartographers of the period attached Iturup to a larger land maps identified as "Terre de Gama". Gama, in this case refers to the Portuguese explorer João da Gama (c. 1540 - after 1591), grandson of Vasco de Gama, who reportedly crossed the North Pacific in the 1580s, in the process mapping some of the Kuril Islands, possibly some of the Aleutian Islands, and potentially even part of the American Coast. Gamaland' was subsequently mapped speculatively on many maps. The reality of Gamaland, as presented here by Nolin, is probably a mismapping of several of the Aleutian Islands as a single landmass attached to the American mainland. Here that landmass, identified as "Partie de L'Amerique" is ghosted in suggested a tenuous state of discovery. Just to the north of these islands the Amur River (Yaniour) exhibits a particularly fiery and virulent outflow into the Arctic - suggesting impassibility. The Amur river was explored by the Russian Cossack expedition of Vassili Poyarkov in 1643-44. The Cossacks established the fort of Albazin on the upper Amur, mapped here, at the site of the former capital of the Solon people. When this map was issued, the fort has fallen under the control of the Chinese. Further to the north there is an unusual projection into the Arctic generally known as Witsen's Peninsula. This oddity appears on numerous maps dating from the late 17th and early 19th century. It is a legacy of Peter the Great's obsession over the search for a Northeast Passage. Around 1648 the Cossack Semyon Dezhnev (1605 - 1673) put together a rough and ready expedition to explore the region. His company consisted of Fedot Alekseyev, traveling with the merchants Andreev and Afstaf'iev (representing the Guselnikov merchant house), who provided their own ship, and Gerasim Ankudinov, an experienced sea captain with his own ship and some 30 men. Dezhnev

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