Carte plate / l'Isle de Ceylan

Black and white French sea chart  of India including Ceylon, the Malabar Coast, and the Coromandel Coast. Similar to the Java chart, de Mannevillette drew the area with uncompromising accuracy. You can see all major coastal towns in southern India and Ceylon and, in some parts, rivers or inlets. In the bottom left you can see a text on the Maldives, describing the still vague knowledge of the area.

Jean-Baptiste D’Après de Mannevillette (1707 - 1780) was one of the most important hydrographers of the Enlightenment Era. He hailed from a minor, but well-connected, noble family and as a teenager apprenticed under the French Royal cartographer Guillaume De L’Isle.  In 1728, he joined the Compagnie des Indes and travelled to China. During the voyage, he conducted astronomical observations that were radically better than those of his predecessors, and he corrected the geodetic coordinates of numerous places.⁣⁣⁣
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D’Après de Mannevillette was horrified by the severe inaccuracies that appeared upon many of the key charts that the French government and trading companies relied upon. Upon his return to France, he embarked upon a mega-project to completely redraw all of the key French charts for the Indian Ocean and Asian navigation, including the route to China, the Red Sea, the coasts of India, Malaya, the northern parts of Indonesia, Indochina and China. ⁣⁣
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D' Après de Mannevillette published this chart within a sea atlas entitled Le Neptune Oriental (Paris, 1745), which consisted 22 charts.  The publication received rave reviews, as the excellent charts were highly valued for making practical navigation much easier and, in some cases, were even credited with saving lives.

Jean-Baptiste de Mannevillette
Title
South part of India and Sri Lanka
Publication Place / Date
Image Dimensions
Paris / 1775
750 x 530 mm.
Color
Condition
Black and White
VG+
Product Price
Product Number
USD 470
SKU #M.0079