Pascaert van 't Oostelyckste deel van Oost Indien

Anthonie Jacobsz. Theunis was an Amsterdam publisher of pilot books and sea atlases. After his death in 1650, the business was continued by his sons Jacob and Casparus, who adopted the name Lootsman, meaning “sea pilot, ” to distinguish themselves from other Amsterdam printers named Jacobsz.

This sea chart of the eastern part of the East Indies was first published by Jacob and Casparus Lootsman in Amsterdam in 1669. It replaced an earlier chart derived from Johannes van Loon’s 1661 plate, itself based on Hendrick Doncker’s 1659 map (see 234for the 1667 edition). The new plate carried the Lootsman address: t Amsterdam By Jacob en Casparus Lootsman Boeckverkoopers opt Water inde Lootsman. This example is a later issue from 1681. Around 1669, they replaced the map with this similar one bearing their own address: t Amsterdam By Jacob en Casparus Lootsman Boeckverkoopers opt Water inde Lootsman.

The chart is oriented with east at the top, as indicated by its compass roses. It extends from Cape Comorin in southern India to Japan, taking in the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, New Guinea, and the northern and western coasts of Australia. The elaborate title cartouche is decorated with seaweed, shells, and marine ornament, placing the chart firmly within the visual language of Dutch maritime publishing. The Australian coastline records several seventeenth-century Dutch discoveries. These include Dirk Hartog’s 1616 landfall at ’t Landt van Eendracht, Frederik de Houtman’s discoveries of 1619, the voyage of the Leeuwin in 1622, Jan Carstensz. and Willem Joosten van Colster’s exploration of northern Australia in 1623, Pieter Nuyts’s 1627 voyage in the ’t Gulden Zeepaert, and Gerrit Frederiksz. de Witt’s 1628 contribution to the mapping of the western coast. The title cartouche obscures the area where Van Diemen’s Land and Staten Land would otherwise be expected.

Within the collection, this chart is closely connected with Hendrick Doncker’s chart of Java (422), Samuel Dunn’s chart of the Sunda Strait (419), James Horsburgh’s chart of the Sunda Strait and Batavia Roads (417), and Pieter Goos’s Pascaerte Vande Zuyd-Zee (466). It also relates to Blaeu’s East Indies maps (76, 121, and 108), which present similar Dutch maritime knowledge of Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and Australia in atlas-map form.