Carte de l'Ile de Java: partie Occidentale, partie Orientale, Dressée tout nouvellement sur les Mémoirs les plus...

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A beautiful example of Henri Chatelain's important 1720 map of Java. The map was produced for Chatelain's 7 volume world atlas out of Amsterdam. Covers the island in full as well as adjacent parts of Sumatra and Bali. The volcanic island of Krakatau, here identified as Cracatao, which nearly 150 years later would erupt with devastating consequences, appears in the Strait of Sunda between Java and Sumatra. In the lower left side is an inset details the city and port of Batavia. Henri Abraham Chatelain (1684 - 1743) was a Huguenot pastor of Parisian origins. He lived consecutively in Paris, St. Martins, London (c. 1710), The Hague (c. 1721) and Amsterdam (c. 1728). He is best known as a Dutch cartographer and more specifically for his cartographic contribution in the seminal seven volume Atlas Historique, published in Amsterdam between 1705 and 1720. Innovative for its time, the Atlas Historique combined fine engraving and artwork with scholarly studies of geography, history, ethnology, heraldry, and cosmography. Some scholarship suggests that the Atlas Historique was not exclusively compiled by Henri Chatelain, as is commonly believed, but rather was a family enterprise involving Henri, his father Zacharie and his brother, also Zacharie.

Koeman, Cornelis, Atlantes Neerlandici. Bibliography of Terrestrial, Maritime and Celestial Atlases and Pilot Books, Published in the Netherlands up to 1880, ch 6 (9). Suarez, T., Early Mapping of Southeast Asia, page 232.