De Eilanden van Sunda, waar onder zyn Sumatra, Java, Borneo, enz

Nicolas Sanson was a French cartographer and royal geographer whose work helped establish a distinct French school of cartography in the mid-seventeenth century. Originally trained as a historian, he turned to mapmaking partly as a way of organising and illustrating historical and geographical knowledge. After his work attracted royal attention, he was appointed Géographe Ordinaire du Roi. His small-format continental atlases, including L’Asie en plusieurs cartes nouvelles et exactes, first published in Paris in 1652, presented Asia through a sequence of general and regional maps.

Among the seventeen maps featured in his atlas is this map of the Sunda Islands. The map focuses on Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the surrounding islands, with parts of the Malay Peninsula, the southern Philippines, Celebes, and the western edge of the Moluccan region also shown. It places the Sunda Islands at the centre of a maritime world linking the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, the Java Sea, and the routes towards the Spice Islands. The geography reflects the commercial importance of the region to European mapmakers and traders. Java is shown with Batavia on the north coast, while Sumatra and Borneo are densely labelled with coastal settlements, ports, rivers, and regional names. The map is less a detailed inland survey than a structured image of an archipelagic trading zone, where coastlines, straits, and ports were the essential geographical features.

The rich hand colour and gold illumination attributed to Dirk Jansz. van Santen heighten the visual distinction between islands, coasts, seas, and political regions and give this small-format map a visual presence beyond its original atlas scale.

Within the collection, this map is closely connected with Sanson’s general map of Asia (401), his related map of mainland Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula (403), and his map of the Moluccas (404).