't Wester Deel van Oost Indien Streckende van C. de bona Esperance tot Ceylon (and) 't Ooster Deel van Oost Indien Streckende van Ceyon tot Iapan en Hollandia Nova

Hendrick Doncker was an Amsterdam bookseller, chartmaker, and hydrographer whose work helped shape Dutch maritime publishing in the mid-seventeenth century. His two-part chart of the East Indies presents the maritime route from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan and Hollandia Nova. The western sheet extends from the Cape of Good Hope to Ceylon, while the eastern sheet continues from Ceylon to Japan and northern Australia. Together, the two sheets form a broad Dutch hydrographic image of the Indian Ocean, maritime Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the western Pacific approaches.

The chart was originally conceived in a larger format and then adapted for atlas use. In adapting it, Doncker masked the oversized margins of the original printing plates and engraved title cartouches directly onto both sheets. This issue is therefore the earliest state to include cartouches on both panels. Later states appeared in 1666 and again around 1680, the latter with a newly engraved title design. The chart records the accumulated results of Dutch navigation, trade, and coastal discovery. Along the Australian coast it preserves names associated with early VOC encounters, including 't Landt van Eendracht, the Leeuwin, G. F. de Wits Land, and Hollandia Nova. These names recall the voyages of Dirk Hartog, Frederick de Houtman, the Leeuwin, Jan Carstensz. and Willem Joosten van Colster, Pieter Nuyts in the 't Gulden Zeepaert, Gerrit Frederiksz. de Witt, and Abel Tasman. The chart therefore places Australian coastal discovery within the wider maritime geography of the VOC route system.

The chart is oriented with east at the top, a practical convention used in several Dutch sea charts of the period. Rhumb lines, coastal soundings, island groups, compass roses, and anchorage information emphasise navigational use, while the breadth of coverage shows the East Indies as a connected oceanic world linking Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Australia.

This chart is closely connected with Doncker’s large vellum India Orientalis chart (33), and his eastern East Indies chart (234), and Doncker II’s later Java chart (422), which narrows the focus from the wider East Indies to Java and its surrounding waters. It also forms a useful comparison with Robert Dudley’s earlier chart of the western and northern coasts of Australia (172), which records similar Dutch voyage material in an earlier Italian sea-atlas context.