Insulae molucca celeberrimae sunt ob maximam aromatum copiam quam per totum terrarum orbem mittunt

Petrus Plancius was a Flemish-born theologian, cartographer, and cosmographer who became a key figure in Dutch maritime geography in the years before the foundation of the Dutch East India Company. Working in Amsterdam with the publisher Cornelis Claesz., Plancius helped transform Portuguese and Spanish navigational intelligence into printed maps that supported Dutch commercial ambitions in Asia.

This map of the Moluccas and surrounding seas was first published in Amsterdam by Cornelis Claesz. in 1594. This example is the first state, identifiable by the pasted letterpress title in the upper cartouche and the engraved signature of Ioannes à Doetechum in the lower margin. In the second state, issued before 1609, the title was engraved directly into the plate and the signature altered. A third and final state was issued in 1617 by Claes Jansz. Visscher (72), showing the continuing usefulness of the plate more than two decades after its first publication. The long Latin title underscores the commercial importance of the islands, describing the Moluccas as famous for the abundance of spices exported throughout the world. It names Ternate, Tidor, Motir, Machian, and Bachian as the principal islands, while also referring to Gilolo, Celebes, Borneo, Ambon, Banda, and Timor. The title links these places directly to the trade in cloves, nutmeg, mace, and red and white sandalwood.

Three botanical illustrations — Nux myristica (nutmeg), Caryophillorum arbor (clove tree), and Santalum album (sandalwood) — appear in the lower margin, marked ex natura delineavimus (“we have drawn them from nature”). These images are central to the map’s purpose: they identify the commodities that made the region valuable to European traders and connect geography with natural history and commerce. New Guinea occupies a large and uncertain position in the lower right, while Beach appears in the lower left as part of the inherited southern-continent geography. The map therefore combines commercial specificity with unresolved cosmographical ideas. It maps the islands sought by Dutch merchants while preserving older speculation about the geography of the far south.

Within the collection, this first state is directly connected with the later 1617 Visscher issue of the same map (72). It also relates to Plancius’s map of southeastern Africa and the western Indian Ocean (228), which represents the western approach to Asian waters, and to his world maps (340, 71, and 105), where the Moluccas, New Guinea, and Beach are placed within a global frame. Ortelius’s Indiae Orientalis, Insularumque Adiacientium Typus (106) and Maris Pacifici (221and 118) provide useful comparisons for earlier atlas mapping of the East Indies, New Guinea, and the Pacific.