Insulae indiae orientalis et molucae

Levinus Hulsius was a Flemish-born publisher, engraver, linguist, and compiler of voyage literature active in Nuremberg. His illustrated travel publications followed the wider late sixteenth-century interest in voyages beyond Europe, presenting recent discoveries and commercial intelligence through text, maps, and engraved images.

This map was published by Hulsius in 1602 in Nuremberg in 1602. It focuses on maritime Southeast Asia and the Moluccas, showing Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi, the Philippines, the Moluccas, Bali, Timor, and surrounding islands. The title appears in the upper cartouche, with Hulsius’s name at upper right. The map shows the tracks of the Dutch second fleet to the East Indies, reaching the Spice Islands of Banda, Ambon, Ternate, and Tidore. Its dotted routes lead through the island world of Southeast Asia, presenting the region as a connected maritime network of ports, passages, and trading centres. Place names such as Siucapura near the southern Malay Peninsula, Bantam on Java, and the named islands of the Moluccas locate the voyage within the commercial geography of the spice trade.

Hulsius’s map closely follows the corresponding Southeast Asia section of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s overview chart of the Far East, published by Cornelis Claesz in 1596. It therefore shows how Linschoten’s Portuguese-derived information was quickly reworked for a German-speaking readership interested in Dutch access to Asian trade. The Moluccas were of particular importance because of their association with cloves, nutmeg, and mace. By concentrating on the island geography of Southeast Asia and the route to the Spice Islands, the map presents the East Indies as a maritime trading world made up of narrow passages, coastal settlements, and commercially valuable islands.

Within the collection, this map is closely connected with Levinus Hulsius’s broader India Orientalis (312) and Cornelis de Houtman’s voyage account (455) and the Linschoten map of Southeast Asia (74).