An iconic map of the New Netherlands, New England, Pennsylvania and parts of Maryland and Virginia. A superb example in fine original color on thick paper with wide margins.

This is an interesting entrant in the “Jansson-Visscher” series of maps, many variants of which were issued over the course of more than a century. The series began with Joannes Jansson‘s 1651 Belgii Novi, which was published in Amsterdam and patriotically depicted a sprawling New Netherlands with a tiny New England confined east of the Connecticut River. This map was copied by Nicholas Visscher in 1655, who enhanced his map’s appeal by introducing an inset view of New Amsterdam at lower right, and his version was later appropriated for this map by Justus Danckerts.

Offered here is the third state of Danckerts’ map, which appeared in or around 1684 after the establishment of Philadelphia. By the time this map appeared, the English had wrested the New Netherlands from the Dutch, William Penn had founded Pennsylvania, and geographic knowledge of the region had advanced considerably. These developments necessitated substantial revisions to the map, as described by Burden:

“Following the founding of Philadelphia a revised state was produced. However, unlike the competing maps [i.e., other post-1682 maps in the Jansson-Visscher series] which largely confined themselves to the city’s addition, Danckerts updated the map in a significant manner. The Delaware River is completely revised so that it no longer connects with the Hudson River. Richard Daniel’s A Map of ye English Empire… c. 1679, had depicted a similar river system. Pennsylvania is named, its boundary is marked, and many largely domesticated animals are engraved within the region. Recognition of the English hold over New Amsterdam is seen in the addition to the title to the view of Nieuw Yorck, eertys Genaemt .”

For all these important alterations, Danckerts could not bring himself to acknowledge the fundamental geo-political shift represented by the English conquest of the New Netherlands. This third state still depicts a vast “Nova Belgica sive Nieuw Nederlandt” dwarfing tiny New England, and the only allusion to New York is, as observed by Burden, in the title of the inset view.

References

Burden, The Mapping of North America II, #434, state 3. Campbell, “The Jansson-Visscher Maps of New England,” #9 (in Tooley, The Mapping of America). Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, vol. 1 pp. 148-150 and plate 7-A (illustrating the first state of the map). Background from De Koning, “From Van der Donck to Visscher,” Mercator’s World vol. 5 no. 4 (July/August 2000), pp. 28-33. Not in Baynton-Williams, “Printed Maps of New England to 1780, Part II: 1670-1700” (at MapForum.com) or McCorkle, New England in Early Printed Maps.