MOTTO OF THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY
Arguably one of the most beautiful maps ever produced, the majestic Leo Belgicus (shown here in rare sitting form by Claes Janszoon Visscher) gathers the Low Countries – modern Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium – in defiant and powerful form. The cartographer Micha’l Eytzinger had the idea in 1583, adapting the traditional Dutch heraldic lion to produce a map of fierce patriotism at a time when the Netherlands was engaged in the Dutch War of Independence from Philip II of Spain between 1568 and 1648.
In fact Visscher’s proud and magnificent Leo is a fitting gatekeeper to the history of early European contact with Australia, for it was produced at a time when global trade was dominated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which was established in 1602 to regulate the Dutch trading ships now trafficking regularly with the East. It is almost impossible to overstate the size, power and wealth of this chartered company, which grew swiftly to become the first multinational corporation, the first to issue stock, and to this day by far the most valuable company in history. Through its aggressive monopoly of trade and colonial activity in Asia, driven by a voracious mercenary appetite, the VOC endowed itself with the power of nations, able to operate with its own currency, declare war and colonize new lands. Some of the greatest explorers in history sailed under its banner, and with cartographers a staple of the crew, its discoveries formed much of the basis of European understanding of Asian geography and beyond. Between 1602 and 1796 almost one million men were dispatched by the VOC to sail their secret spice routes to the Indies, harvesting a total haulage of about 2.5 million tons of Asian goods. (For comparison, their main competitors, the British East India Company, managed only one-fifth of this amount.)
The Dutch explorer Hendrik Brouwer helped to catalyze this prosperity in 1611, by reinventing the route taken to the East. The established way was a taxing voyage, necessitating the rounding of the violent Cape of Good Hope and later crossing the treacherous reefs of the Bay of Bengal. Added to this were the vicissitudes of tropical weather systems, and hostile encounters with Portuguese and English shipping. The journey usually took a year to complete, but the Brouwer route halved this time with an ingenious exploitation of the ‘Roaring Forties’, the powerful unbroken westerly winds between the southern hemisphere latitudes of 40 and 50 degrees. The winds blasted Brouwer’s three-ship party across the Indian Ocean, after which the west Australian current swept them north to Java. This would become the default route for all VOC expeditions.
It was another VOC captain, Willem Janszoon, who unwittingly made one of the most significant discoveries of the company: the first documented sighting of the Australian coast. As master of the yacht Duyfken (‘Little Dove’), on 18 November 1605 Janszoon set sail from the small port town of Bantam, Java, with company orders to explore the coast of New Guinea. Though the original logs of the Duyfken are lost, copies of its map survive and show the first tracing of part of the Australian coastline. Janszoon, however, failed to notice the Torres Strait, which divides Australia from New Guinea, and so after entering the Gulf of Carpentaria assumed the land he arrived at, which would later be known as the western coast of Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula, to be a continuation of New Guinean territory. (By sheer coincidence, only seven months later the Spanish explorer Luis Váez de Torres would sail this strait that would later be given his name, entirely unaware that an entire unexplored continent lay only a few miles south.)
The first printed map of a part of Australia, by Cornelis De Jode. The lower section of this map shows the territory of what is now Queensland, complete with mermen, sea monsters, dragons and lions. This map is also rare in that it depicts the continent as separate from New Guinea, which later cartographers would join.
Janszoon made landfall at the Pennefather river on the western shore of Cape York, the first recorded instance of European feet hitting Australian soil. It was not a particularly joyful discovery for Janszoon, however. The land was swampy and the natives hostile – ten of the crew were lost in skirmishes during the expedition. At a spot that would later be called Cape Keerweer (Dutch for ‘turnabout’), Janszoon decided to end the mission and return to Bantam, reaching port in June 1606, with stories of the land he named ‘Nieu Zeland’, after the Dutch province of Zeeland. (This, of course, would not be adopted until later by Abel Tasman, for his discovery of a separate country.)
All new navigational data and discoveries were carefully recorded by the VOC but kept hidden in their private Zee-Fakel (‘Sea Torch’) atlases, successfully protected from theft and leaks, on the whole, for around 150 years, maintaining Dutch hegemony of the spice trade. Cartographers were placed under strict orders to never reveal or publish the information, as such; it wasn’t until years later that the discoveries of the Duyfken would emerge on maps.
One surprising cartographic leak from this veil of secrecy is a map first published in 1630 by the Dutch cartographer Jan Jansson, who somehow got hold of the Duyfken data and included it on his map of the East Indies, marking ‘Duyfkens Eyland’ beneath New Guinea. This was a particular triumph for Janssonius over his rival Blaeu, who, being the official cartographer of the VOC, was bound to secrecy and unable to print his maps for the public. Along with the Duyfken’s map and a chart of the Pacific by Hessel Gerritsz, this map by Jan Jansson serves as one of the earliest first mappings of Australia.
