Alexander Dalrymple’s Spiteful Innovation in Map History

Interpreting the great continent of “Jave le grande” to deride James Cook

Here’s another thingy I just cut for space…

 An early prefiguring of the core methodology of comparative map history, as it would formalize in the nineteenth century, occurred as part of a spiteful act of historical scholarship. The underlying animus stemmed from the British Admiralty’s decision in 1768 to overrule the Royal Society’s nomination of the hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple to lead a British expedition into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean to observe the Transit of Venus. The Admiralty had not wanted a civilian to have charge of a naval vessel and it instead appointed James Cook to head the expedition (Cook 1993, 1:20, 35–36). As it happened, the 1768–71 voyage made Cook famous for encountering and charting both Aotearoa/New Zealand and the eastern coast of New Holland (modern Australia). Cook’s fame only grew with his second voyages to the Pacific and his reputation was cemented by his death during the third voyage, on a Hawaiian beach in 1779, at the height of his achievements, in the archetypal climax of the hero’s journey.

Several years later, Dalrymple (1786) sniped at Cook’s achievements by means of an anonymous, sixteenth-century manuscript world map, the so-called “Harleian map.” The presence of a large continent to the south of Asia, labeled “Jave le grande,” seemed to prove that Cook had not in fact been the first European to encounter and chart the eastern coast of New Holland, thereby tarnishing Cook’s status as national hero:

The “Harleian” Map (BL Add MS 5413), image from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harleian.jpg from a copy at the National Library of Australia

Dalrymple presented his case in a note that he contrived to insert into an analysis of a recently published French chart of the archipelagos between Madagascar and South Asia in the Indian Ocean. The chart had nothing to do with New Holland, but Dalrymple used a statement about the proliferation of names for specific islands, whether used by the local inhabitants or applied by European mariners from different nations, to add a note about the importance of paying attention to islands’ local names as recorded in early maps. (This toponymic principle relies on the absolute comparison of early with contemporary maps to establish that the islands depicted on both are indeed the same.)

To illustrate this principle, Dalrymple turned to a different example, specifically the history of the Portuguese navigation in eastern waters. He began by discussing the earliest printed maps with which he was already familiar that showed the results of Portuguese voyages, before launching into his identification and analysis of the Harleian map (Dalrymple 1786, 2, 2–4n). He argued that the large landmass of Jave la grande which the Harleian map depicted to the south of Asia, was a rendition of New Holland derived from early Portuguese expeditions. He established the equivalency through “some curious circumstances of correspondence” between the early map and a contemporary geographical work. Specifically, he argued that three toponyms on the eastern coast of New Holland that Cook recorded in his journal closely matched, in both meaning and latitude, three toponyms on the Harleian map’s delineation of Jave la grande:

[In Cook’s journal]    Bay of Inlets = Baye Perdue    [on the Harleian map]

Bay of Isles = R. de beaucoup disles [d’isles]

where the Endeavor struck = Coste dangereuse

Dalrymple concluded sardonically, “we may say with Solomon ‘There is nothing new under the Sun’” (Dalrymple 1786, 3–4n, original emphasis; see Fry 1967, 353–56; Wallis 1988, 72–73; Richardson 2006, 33–34).

For the most part, Dalrymple’s engagement with the Harleian map was very much in line with the approaches taken by early modern scholars to early maps. He drew the equivalence of Jave le grande to New Holland through the common early modern practice of comparing, in absolute terms, the placement and shape of features on an early map to their delineation on a contemporary map. Stated simply: if a feature on an early map looks like or is in the same location as a modern geographical feature, then the early and modern features are the same. Dalrymple’s identification of Jave la grande as New Holland entailed both suppositions: Jave le grande was a large landmass with an approximately correct shape, at least with three discernible sides running in the right directions, and in an approximately correct location, even if was improperly positioned too far toward the east and extended far too far toward the south.

Moreover, Dalrymple’s historical map work was opportunistic: he did not reveal a systematic approach to early maps; he had not previously shown an interest in early maps; nor would he work with early maps thereafter. He had written two histories of geography and discovery twenty years before (Dalrymple 1767, 1769–71), the first as part of his campaign to head the 1768 expedition into the Pacific Ocean (see Cook 1993, 2: nos. A1, A11–12). Both were intended to demonstrate his own credentials as a chart maker and both were very much in line with the historical narratives of other early modern geographers. In particular, Dalrymple sought to trace the routes of past voyagers against contemporary geography.

Nor had Dalrymple set out to find early maps that might disprove Cook’s priority. Dalrymple developed his argument opportunistically and only after the naturalist Daniel Solander had brought the Harleian map to his attention. Solander had somehow acquired the map after it had been stolen in 1753 from the antiquarian collections of Robert and Edward Harley, earls of Oxford. (It had apparently been purloined by the butler during the confusion of transferring the Harleian collections to the fledgling British Museum.) Solander later gave the map to Sir Joseph Banks, with whom he had sailed on Cook’s first voyage; Banks in turn lent it to Dalrymple to have it reproduced in part in facsimile and in 1790 gave it to the British Museum (Dalrymple 1786, 4n):

Alexander Dalrymple, A Copy of Part of an Antient M.S. Map in the British Museum, engr. W. Harrison (London: Alexander Dalrymple, [1790]), showing Jave la grande. Although bearing a copyright date of 24 August 1787, Dalrymple published this facsimile of part of the “Harleian map” only after Sir Joseph Banks had given the original to the BM, as per the facsimile’s title and the date added to the descriptive passage, of 22 February 1790 (Cook 1993, 3.2:1296, no. B533). The original map is now BL Add MS 5413; because it bears the arms of the future Henry II of France, some historians have called it the “Dauphin map.” Copper engraving, 48 × 63 cm. Courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales (SAFE/F8/80, pl. 61); online at https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au]

However, and this is the key point for this post, Dalrymple took an innovative step in his attempt to date the Harleian map. To do so, he adapted the long-established principle of philology of comparing early texts against each other to determine how they were related. Dalrymple now compared, in a relative manner, the Harleian map’s content to that of other early maps to establish the sequence of their preparation. He summarized his reasoning in a statement on his facsimile of the Harleian map (above), below the title at bottom center:

althō without date, [it] appears to have been made early in the 16th Century; Because It has Japan, only vaguely expressed, at a remote distance from the Continent, under the name of Zipangri, from the report of Marco Polo; Whereas in the Map [of Asia], published at Paris in 1575, in “La Cosmographie Universelle” by A. Thevet, Cosmographer to the King of France, the Japan Islands are represented as adjacent to the Continent, and circumstantially described. (original emphasis)

Relative comparison thus places maps in chronological sequence: the content of the Harleian map placed it necessarily earlier than André Thevet’s map of Asia, but perhaps later than Oronce Fine’s double-cordiform world map that was dated 1531 and that had inserted into the French edition of Johann Huttich and Simon Grynäus’s Novus orbis regionum (Paris, 1532; Shirley 2001, no. 66). Dalrymple thought Fine’s map to be “perhaps…the earliest Map extant, containing any similitude to the Eastern Countries.” A chronology of maps, or more accurately a chronology of geographical information contained in maps, allows the importance of each early map to be assessed. Dalrymple dismissed from further consideration the world map in the original edition of the Novus orbis regionum (Basel, 1532; Shirley 2001, no. 67) because it was highly inaccurate and improper for its time. It was therefore irrelevant to any chronology of the growth of geographical information. For Dalrymple (1786, 3n), the Basel map did “not shew the knowledge of the Portuguese, but the ignorance of its Author.”

In the end, Dalrymple’s note and his facsimile did nothing to tarnish James Cook’s stellar reputation. For example, the geographer John Pinkerton (1802, 2:468–70) accepted that the Harleian map, together with Jean Rotz’s “Boke of Idrographie” of ca. 1540—a manuscript marine atlas already in the British Museum’s holdings—indicated that either the Portuguese or the Spanish had undoubtedly discovered the northern coast of New Holland a century before the Dutch arrived, but further argued that these events do not “interfere with the discovery of the [southeastern] part by our immortal Cook” (quoted by Wallis 1988, 73). Frédéric Metz (1805) flatly rejected Dalrymple’s insinuations and animosity. Cook’s great status has since shaped modern scholarship on the history of Pacific voyaging and discovery by structuring it according to the three markedly distinct epochs of before Cook, Cook’s transformative voyages, and after Cook (Samson 2014). Only with the recent rise of postcolonial scholarship has Cook’s iconic status been challenged.

To be clear, Dalrymple’s idiosyncratic use of relative comparison had no influence on later scholars who would use the relative comparison of early maps as the core methodology for their map historical studies. Certainly, the only early works I have encountered that discuss Dalrymple’s study of the Harleian map in detail were histories of discovery who focused on his absolute comparison of the map to Cook’s journal (Metz 1805; Major 1859, xxxi–xxxiii). That is, the methodology of relative comparison was independently developed after 1830 as an obvious technique once scholars hit upon the idea of telling history through early maps.

 References

 Cook, Andrew S. 1993. “Alexander Dalrymple (1737–1808), Hydrographer to the East India Company and to the Admiralty, as Publisher: A Catalogue of Books and Charts.” Ph.D. dissertation. 3 in 5 vols. University of St. Andrews.

Dalrymple, Alexander. 1767. An Account of the Discoveries Made in the South Pacifick Ocean, Previous to 1764. London.

———. 1769–71. An Historical Collection of the Several Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean. 2 vols. London: for the author.

———. 1786. Memoir Concerning the Chagos and Adjacent Islands. London: George Bigg.

Fry, H. T. 1967. “Early British Interest in the Chago Archipelago and the Maldive Islands.” Mariner’s Mirror 53: 343–56.

Major, R. H. 1859. Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia: A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of that Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook. London: Hakluyt Society.

Metz, Frédéric. 1805. “Géographie. Aux rédacteurs de la Revue.” La Revue, Philosophique, Littéraire et Politique 47: 261–66.

Pinkerton, John. 1802. Modern Geography: A Description of the Empires, Kingdoms, States, and Colonies, with the Oceans, Seas, and Isles, in All Parts of the World, Including the Most Recent Discoveries, and Political Alterations, Digested on a New Plan. 2 vols. London: A. Strahan for T. Cadell Jr. and W. Davies.

Richardson, W. A. R. 2006. Was Australia Charted before 1606? The Jave la Grande Inscriptions. [Canberra]: National Library of Australia.

Samson, Jane. 2014. “Exploring the Pacific World.” In Reinterpreting Exploration: The West in the World, ed. Dane Kennedy, 154–71. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Shirley, Rodney W. 2001. The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps, 1472–1700. 2nd ed. Riverside, CT: Early World Press.

Wallis, Helen M. 1988. “Java la Grande: The Enigma of the Dieppe Maps.” In Terra Australis to Australia, ed. Glyndwr Williams, and Alan Frost, 39–81. Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities.