Blaeu’s VOC chart

Detailed charts of the Asian waters and coasts, where the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was active were confidential, meaning that these charts were only produced as manuscript maps. In the period that this chart was produced, Joan Blaeu II, the third generation of the famous Amsterdam publishing family, was official mapmaker of the VOC. The Blaeu’s couldn’t include the information from the detailed VOC-chart in their commercial, printed atlases. This chart is a prototype chart, used for inter-Asian voyages from Batavia to Siam, Cambodia and southern Vietnam. Central Vietnam is indicated as ‘Couchinchina’ and southern Vietnam as ‘Tsiompa’ (Champa).

Joan Blaeu II, VOC-chart of the Gulf of Siam and the coasts of Tsiompa and Cochinchina, 1686 (manuscript on parchment) (COLLBN 054-12-001).