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Description

The Levinus Hulsius Map of Southeast Asia and the Philippines

Fine example of this rare and highly detailed map of South East Asia, also including India, China, Japan and the northern tip of Australia , published by Levinus Hulsius in Nuremberg.

The map provides a detailed look at the "East Indies" as known to the Dutch at the beginning of the 17th Century.

As noted by Adolf Asher in summarizing Hulsius' second book, published in 1602,

th e Dutch, after casting off the yoke of Spain, began earnestly to apply themselves to commerce; and as they were prevented by Philipp from procuring Oriental productions at Lisbon, they determined to seek for them in India itself. With this view they fitted out a fleet which penetrating by the forbidden channel, appeared, to the dismay of the Portuguese, among the Moluccas. Here the sagacious Hollanders were not slow in supplanting their rivals in the Spice trade, whilst they were very little scrupulous in the application of force, as soon as they saw ground to expect, that it might be applied advantageously. After a brief, but sharp struggle, the Portuguese were wholly expelled from the Moluccas, establishments were next formed at Java and Sumatra, and rapid strides were made towards the erection of a new monopoly, which threatened to engross all the most valuable commerce of these regions. Nor were the Dutch less careful in providing means for the protection of the trade, than industrious in securing the trade itself. They erected forts at convenient stations, which they filled with soldiers, while their armed fleets swept the bays and channels both of the Chinese and Pacific oceans with a force, which even England would have found it a hard matter, at that time, adequately to oppose.

The German writer Levinus Hulsius compiled an extensive collection of accounts of explorers' voyages, published ultimately in twenty-six parts. Eight years after de Bry began the publication of his Great Voyages', Levin Hulsius, stimulated by the success of the Bry's work, began the publication of a similar collection in quarto. Hulsius is credited with having exercised better judgement in his selections and translations than the de Bry.