Page 325 - Eye of the beholder

city in eastern India, exists in the map as
the small village settlement of “Collecatte”. Calcutta is said to have been founded by
Job Charnock, an administrator of the British East India Company in the 1690s. By the 1700s, the British had completed
the building of Fort William, and Calcutta was a British trading outpost; this is how “Collecatte” appears in the “Nouvelle Carte”. Just above “Collecatte” is the fort town of “Soelanoeti” – deceptively similar
to “Sutanuti” – one of the three villages from which modern Kolkata originated,
and differing from it only because of the cross of a “T”. The position of “Soelanoeti” is exactly at the place where one would expect “Sutanuti” to be. Close to these two settlements in the map is a small settlement labelled “Loge Danoise”, which in English would mean the “Danish Cabin”. There was a trading outpost of the Danish East India Company in Serampore; however, this map shows “Loge Danoise” and Serampore as separate settlements, close to each other. The earliest Danish settlement on the east coast was Dannemarksnagore (1698–1714) at Gondalpara, southeast of Chandernagore. It is probably this settlement that is referred to in the “Nouvelle Carte” as “Loge Danoise”. Subsequently, in 1755, Fredericksnagore
in present-day Serampore was established. Further down along the coast from “Coelcatte” is the important trading city of “Balaffor” – the precursor of present-day Balasore. There are other villages and towns in this region which are still recognizable – e.g. Bandel, Congnerre, Aliepoer, etc. But some others – Calcula and Sandvoorsdorp
– though obviously important in those times cannot any more be readily identified.
Doubtless, the “Nouvelle Carte” is
an important document in the history of eastern India of the 1700s. The important land routes of the region are also shown in the map. It is interesting to see that the routes closely follow the trajectory of the rivers – both for access to habitation and
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water, as well as for the sake of safety. A continuous road stretches from Patna to Dacca, bifurcating near Murshidabad to connect Cuttack and Balasore in Orissa. It
is romantic to speculate on how the history of India was determined by events in the trading posts mentioned in this map. A closer study will surely reveal many other informative and interesting facts. Despite being a treasure trove of information, however, the “Nouvelle Carte” is low in visual charm compared to the “MMI”. It lacks the elaborate cartouches, the attractive hand painting, and the interesting pictorial depictions. Yet, both maps give us interesting insights into aspects of the history of India in its making. Above all, as we noted above, they are a tribute to humankind’s spirit of adventure and thirst for knowledge.
FIGURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The “Magni Mogolis Imperium”, the “Nouvelle Carte de Royaume de Bengale”, and the engraving (print) of Bombay illustrated here belong to the private collection of Drs Anirban and Rejina Sadhu, Basel, Switzerland.
REFERENCES
Harvey, Miles. The Island of Lost Maps – A true story of
cartographic crime Broadway Books, New York, 2000. Koeman, Cornelius. Joan Blaeu and his Grand Atlas.
Amsterdam, 1970
Moreland, Carl and David Bannister. Antique Maps –
A collector’s handbook. Longman, London, 1983.
Skelton, R.A. Maps – A historical survey of their study and collecting. The University of Chicago Press, 1972.
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An Early Manuscript Map
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