The Murillo Bulletin Issue No. 9 by PHIMCOS

The Murillo Bulletin Journal of PHIMCOS The Philippine Map Collectors Society

Issue No. 9

February 2020

In this Issue:  

PHIMCOS en España

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Nomadic Papua

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The Story of the “Croquis de la Isla de Mindanao” 

The Selden Map of China

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The Murillo Bulletin Issue No. 9

February 2020 In this Issue

PHIMCOS News & Events

page 3

PHIMCOS en España by Margarita V. Binamira, Maria Paz K. Fabella & Peter Geldart

Addenda & Corrigenda

The Story of the “Croquis de la Isla de Mindanao” by Christian Perez

Book Review: The Selden Map of China by Hongping Annie Nie

Nomadic Papua by Richard T. Jackson

PHIMCOS Trustees, Members & Committee Members

About PHIMCOS The Philippine Map Collectors Society (PHIMCOS) was established in 2007 in Manila as the first club for collectors of antique maps and prints in the Philippines. Membership of the society, which has grown to a current total of 50 members (including individual and joint members, and corporate nominees), is open to anyone interested in collecting, analysing or appreciating historical maps, charts, prints, paintings and photographs of the Philippines. PHIMCOS holds quarterly general meetings at which members and their guests discuss cartographic news and give after-dinner presentations on topics such as maps of particular interest, famous cartographers, the mapping of the Philippines, or the lives of prominent Filipino collectors and historians. A major focus for PHIMCOS is the sponsorship of exhibitions, lectures and other educational events designed to educate the public about the importance of cartography as a way of learning both the geography and the history of the Philippines. The Murillo Bulletin, the society’s journal, is published twice a year. PHIMCOS welcomes new members. The fee for an Individual Membership is Php.6,000 per annum; for Joint Memberships (for two people) and Corporate Memberships (with two nominees) the fee is Php.10,000 per annum. Members and guests who attend general meetings also pay a contribution towards the cost of dinner and drinks of Php.1,200 per member or guest. The application form and additional information on PHIMCOS are available on our website www.phimcos.org . Front Cover: Carta Itineraria de la Isla de Luzon by Don Anselmo Olleros (Madrid, 1882) (image courtesy of the Archivo del Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Madrid)

PHIMCOS News & Events

HE THIRD general meeting of the year was held on 14 August, with 27 members and 15 guests in attendance. Three presentations were given, the first being “The Upside-down 1554 Ramusio Map of Southeast Asia” by John Silva, a fascinating account of the map which was the first to show the name “Filipina”. John was followed by Christian Perez, who spoke about the Croquis de la Isla de Mindanao, a map published in Havana in 1898 (see page 17). The evening finished with a talk by Richard Jackson on “Nomadic Papua”, an account of the different meanings and cartographic history of the placename ‘Papua’ (see page 23). The 14 August meeting set a new high for the number of members and guests present, but this record was smashed on 13 November when no fewer than 28 members and 24 guests came to the final meeting of the year. Again we had three presentations. Peter Geldart spoke about “The Map that Never Was”, the story of Alexander Dalrymple’s Chart of the Philipinas and a recently-discovered letter from Dalrymple to an unknown correspondent that helps to explain why the chart was never published. Bunny Fabella then gave a spirited, fully illustrated presentation on “PHIMCOS en España – Archivos, Mapas y Tapas”. The tour of Spain had been the highlight of the year for some PHIMCOS members, and a full account is given on pages 5-11. To wrap up the evening, Anna Melinda Testade Ocampo gave a talk on “The Indigenous Intermediary in Dampier’s and Forrest’s Travel Accounts on Mindanao”. Ms Testa-de Ocampo teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman. The paper, first presented in July 2019 at the Annual Philippine Studies Conference, SOAS, University of London, is part of her dissertation “Literary Cartography in the European Travel Accounts on Mindanao in the 17th and 18th centuries”.

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Prior to the presentations, at the 13 November general meeting the members approved a number of amendments to the PHIMCOS Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws proposed by the Board of Trustees. A summary of the principal changes is as follows:  change of the principal office of the Society to 7/F Arthaland Century Pacific Tower, BGC;  a provision that the Corporation shall have perpetual existence;  the stipulation that a quorum shall consist of a majority of the members in good standing, defined as: “any member who has fulfilled the requirements for membership in the Society, is current in the payment of all dues and/or other accountabilities to the Society, and who neither has voluntarily withdrawn from membership nor has been expelled or suspended from membership after appropriate proceedings consistent with lawful provisions of the bylaws of the Society”;

 the introduction of term limits for board members whereby, on a rolling basis, two Trustees will retire each year; new Trustees will be elected for a term of 3 years, and may be elected for a second consecutive three-year term, but will then not be eligible to serve again for a period of one year; and  that the President is exempted from the new term limits; after serving the above maximum number of terms, the President may be reelected to the Board of Trustees for another term upon majority vote of the Members. As well as these changes to the Articles of Incorporation and By-Laws, the Board of Trustees has also decided that former members of PHIMCOS who wish to rejoin the society will be permitted to do so as balik members, without the requirement to submit a new membership application (but on condition that any outstanding dues have been paid).

PHIMCOS en España – Mapas y Tapas, y Archivos y Vinos by Margarita V. Binamira, Maria Paz K. Fabella & Peter Geldart

FTER THE successful PHIMCOS U.K. Tour in June 2018, many members thought a tour to Spain would be interesting as there is so much to see there in terms of Philippine cartography, with numerous archives, libraries and museums serving as repositories of maps, books and documents relating to the Philippines. And of course, with Spanish cuisine and wine available to complement the visit, what was there not to look forward to? Some 15 months later, after many hours and days of research, coordination, scheduling and making reservations, ten PHIMCOS members and relatives embarked on a cartographic and gastronomic tour of Spain that started in Madrid on September 21 and, via Valladolid and Sevilla, ended in Barcelona on September 29, 2019. As luck would have it, our visit coincided exactly with the 500th anniversary of Ferdinand Magellan’s departure from Sevilla on September 20, 1519 to begin his search for the Spice Islands by sailing on a westward route, a voyage that would become the first circumnavigation of the world.

The PHIMCOS viajeros at the Rizal Monument in Madrid (from left): Albert Montilla, Chari Montilla, Andoni Aboitiz, Connie González, Jimmie González, Marga Binamira, Alfredo Roca, Marian Olbes, Peter Geldart and Bunny Fabella

Madrid

Valladolid

Led by PHIMCOS founding member and tour organizer Don Alfredo Roca, we met in Madrid to begin our visits with a tour of Madrid, with particular emphasis on sights relevant to the Philippines. We saw the Rizal Monument on the Avenida de Filipinas (a replica of the original by Richard Kissling at the Luneta), built in 1996,(1) at which we subsequently laid a new wreath on behalf of PHIMCOS; and in the Parque del Buen Retiro we listened to a concert by Philippine composer José Montserrat Maceda at the Palacio de Cristal (purpose-built for the Philippine Exposition of 1887). In the afternoon, after a hearty asturiano lunch at Restaurante Orbayo, we visited the Museo Nacional de Antropología which has, among other exhibits, oil paintings by Félix Resurección Hidalgo, photographs of the Philippine Exposition, and Philippine ethnographic items including spears, baskets, costumes and kalabaw-headed pipes.

The next day we took a trip to Valladolid where, after a two-hour train ride from Madrid, we were met by Prof. Roberto Blanco, a Spanish historian whose specialty is the Philippines, and taken to the Museo Oriental de Valladolid on the Paseo de Filipinos. The museum is in the Parroquia de San Agustín of the Agustinos Filipinos, and first we passed by the archives of the Iglesia de los Filipinos. The archivero, Padre Policarpo Hernández, was kind enough to show us both a large manuscript Plano de la Provincia de Ylocos Norte by Don Miguel Castro, and a book with maps of the provinces, Mapa General de las almas que administran los PP. Agustinos Calzados en estas Islas Filipinas, published by D. Miguel Sánchez in Madrid in 1845. After our brief stop at the archives we walked to the Museo Oriental (founded in 1874), through the cloisters and rectory where we saw several

Plano de la Provincia de Ylocos Norte by Don Miguel Castro (Archivo de la Iglesia de los Filipinos, Valladolid)

important portraits of Augustinians who at various times had been assigned to the Philippines. At the museum we were met by Padre Marcial Laguna OSA, a priest from General Santos who helps the Director, Padre Blas Sierra de la Calle OSA, with the museum. Padre Marcial toured us around the collections and showed us relevant Philippine objets d’art and artifacts, including several maps; paintings by Fabián de la Rosa and Félix Resurección Hidalgo; original copies of the Flora de Filipinas by Padre Francisco Manuel Blanco OSA and the Conquistas de las Islas Philipinas by Padre Fray Gaspar de San Agustin (Madrid, 1698); and important 17th and 18th century ivory santos and statues of the Virgin made in the Philippines by Chinese craftsmen. To finish the tour, Padre Marcial brought out some books and atlases in the museum’s collection including Delle navigationi et viaggi by Giovanni Battista Ramusio (Venice 1563) containing Terza Tavola, the first map to name an island “Filipina”; and the book with the 1659 map Provincia Insularum Philippinarum Ordinis Eremitarum Sancti Augustini by Agustín Lubin. Before leaving we bought quite a few copies of Padre Blas’s books about Philippines art. As we came out of the museum, we were fortunate to catch the tail end of the Medio Maratón Ciudad de Valladolid and some of us cheered on the remaining runners. We then took Padre Marcial for an excellent lunch at Los Zagales de Abadia to celebrate his birthday that day. After lunch, Prof. Blanco took us for a walking tour

Provincia Insularum Philippinarum Ordinis Eremitarum Sancti Augustini by Agustín Lubin (Museo Oriental, Valladolid)

of Valladolid before we returned to Madrid, during which we saw the palace in which King Felipe II, the prince after whom our country is named, was born on May 21, 1527. Madrid continued Back in Madrid, the following morning we went to La Casa del Mapa where Sr. Marcos Pavo, Jefe de Área del Registro Central de Cartografía, Dirección General del Instituto Geográfico Nacional, gave us an animated tour of his current and excellently-curated exhibition Los mapas y la primera vuelta al mundo – La expedición de Magallanes y Elcano. Sr. Pavo kindly gave each of us brochures, hand-outs and copies of maps, and many of us stayed on to browse and make purchases in the bookstore. After the exhibition we adjourned next door to the Cartoteca, Biblioteca y Archivo Topográfico del Instituto Geográfico Nacional, where maps pertaining to the Philippines had been laid out for us to see. Among these were the magnificent Plano topográfico de la isla de Cebú by Enrique Abella y Casariego (Madrid, 1884); a quartersize 1744 Murillo Velarde Mapa delas Yslas Philipinas with the revised cartouche; the Carta Itineraria de la Isla de Luzon by Don Anselmo Olleros (Madrid, 1882) (see front cover); and an Atlas Geográfico de la Isla de Luzón y Adyacentes by Don Domingo M. de Pisón y Don Paulino G. Franco, published in Manila in 1898 by Chofré y Ca. Editores. ˂ 17th C. Hispano-Filipino ivory

statue of Saint Francis of Assisi (Museo Oriental, Valladolid)

˂ PHIMCOS at the La Casa del Mapa with Sr. Marcos Pavo (center)

Plano topográfico de la isla de Cebú by Enrique Abella y Casariego (image courtesy of the Archivo del Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Madrid) ѵ

After a tapas lunch at Lateral, we laid our wreath at the Rizal Monument and then proceeded to the Real Basílica de San Francisco el Grande where we were met by Padre Pedro Gil OFM. Although it was closed to the public that day, he gave us a private tour of the basilica including the main church with its magnificent dome, leading us through many corridors and passageways that held paintings and sculptures not seen by many. Padre Gil explained that the government has given the Franciscans permission to stay and manage the basilica until the year 2026. As such, it is now the repository of the Archivo Franciscano Ibero-Oriental, where we were allowed to see a selection of maps, books and records relating to the Philippines that had been brought back to Spain by the Franciscans. These included a drawing of the Volcán de Taal by Manuel Magno de Valenzuela showing the volcano’s eruptions in 1749-50;(2) several detailed manuscript maps of rivers; and the Diccionario Geográfico, Estadístico, Histórico, de las Islas Filipinas by Fr. Manuel Buzeta and Fr. Felipe Bravo (Madrid, 1850).

A nice surprise was a chance encounter with Professor Regalado Trota José, Jr., Archivist of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, who was doing some research for an upcoming symposium. To round off the day we walked through the narrow streets of old Madrid around the Puerta del Sol to the Librería Bardón in the Plaza de San Martín. The bookstore, established in 1947, is a fantastic treasure trove of old and rare books, maps and documents. Alicia Bardón, the co-proprietor and granddaughter of the founder Luis Bardón Lopez, made us feel welcome and showed us some fine volumes, including a first edition of José Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, and a set of Francisco Coello’s 1852 maps of the Islas Filipinas; again, purchases were made!

˂ Manuscript map of the Pueblo de Dilao

(Archivo Franciscano Ibero-Oriental, Real Basílica de San Francisco el Grande, Madrid)

Models of Magellan’s ships in the Fuimos los primeros exhibition at the Museo Naval, Madrid

We started our fourth and final day in Madrid by queuing outside the Spanish Navy’s Museo Naval, in the Instituto de Historia y Cultura Naval. The museum itself was closed for renovation, but we had come for a guided visit of the exhibition Fuimos los primeros. Magallanes, Elcano y la Vuelta al Mundo led by Sr. José Diaz Navarette, which proved to be a well-organized audiovisual treat. But a better treat lay in store for us, in the form of a visit to the Sala de Investigación of the Archivo del Museo Naval. There we met Coronel de Infantería de Marina Eduardo Brinquis Crespo and Sra. Maria del Pilar del Campo Hernán, Directora técnica de Archivos, who had agreed to host our visit at the kind request of Andoni Aboitiz’s cousin-in-law Admiral Teodoro de Leste Contreras. We presented our hosts with a copy of the PHIMCOS catalogue Mapping the Philippine Seas. Sra. Hernán and her team had prepared a large selection of maps and charts that they thought would be interesting for the group to see, including a striking manuscript map dated 1834 by Don Guillermo

de Galwéy, Déstacamento dé Pangasinang, showing waterways, towns and military detachments in the mountains of Pangasinan; a wonderfully detailed city map of Cebu City Plano Topográfico de la Ciudad de Cebú - Barrios de Lutaos y Parian parte del pueblo de Sn. Nicolás y límites de Catambam rectificado y aumentado pr. el Capitan de Artilla. Novella año de 1842; and the Carta Esférica y Plano Topográfico de las Islas Filipinas by Ildefonso de Aragón (1820) (3). Perhaps the most interesting of the maps on display was a c1825 pirate map of Southeast Asia, copied from Dutch charts but with all the names written in Bugis. This map had been seized from a pirate vessel from Jolo, passed on to an Augustinian missionary who handed it to the Comandante del Apostadero de Cavite, and given to the Museo Naval in 1847; it is one of only two surviving Bugis pirate maps (see p. 16). Plano Topográfico de la Ciudad de Cebú by “el Capitan de Artilleria Novella”, 1842 (image courtesy of the Archivo del Museo Naval, Madrid)

PHIMCOS at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, with Sra. Inés Arnáiz García (second from left), Sra. Carmen García Calatayud (at center-right) and Sr. Carlos García Santa Cecilia (far right). Fr. Murillo Velarde’s Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica delas Yslas Filipinas is on the table.

After a quick lunch at Pasteleria Mallorca we wound up our all-too-brief time in Madrid with a visit to the Biblioteca Nacional de España, where we were given a tour of the reading and research rooms by Sr. Carlos García Santa Cecilia. Then we went to the cartography room to meet Sra. Carmen García Calatayud, head of the Servicio de Cartografía, and Sra. Inés Arnáiz García, who had pre-selected some maps and documents which they thought we would enjoy. Pride of place was given to the BNE’s copy of Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde’s 1734 Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica delas Yslas Filipinas. We also saw a beautiful Ortelius atlas; an unusually large map of the Bicol region dated 1864, Direccion del Trazado de la Carretera del Sur Plano Levantado por la Comision Estrecho de S. Bernardino; the Plano de la Ciudad, y Plaza de Manila, Capital de la Ysla de Luzon, con el proyecto para la mejor defensa que propuso a S.M. el Teníente General don Juan Martin Zermeño from 1766; and the 1883 edition of the great map of the Isla de Luzon y sus Adyacentes by Don Enrique d’Almonte y Muriel.

But the highlight of the visit was the book Album – Vistas de las Yslas Filipinas y Traces de sus Abitantes which is “the most complete, intact and comprehensive folio” of drawings by the Filipino artist José Honorato Lozano. This album, dated 1847, was commissioned for or by Gervasio Gironella, the Superintendente y Intendente del Ejercito y de la Hacienda (Superintendent of the Army and QuarterMaster General of the Treasury) in Manila; it contains some 80 plates showing Philippine quotidian life, landscapes and cultural traditions, and was rediscovered in the BNE (by Prof. Trota José) only in 2000.(4) Sevilla The following day we took a high-speed train to Sevilla; leaving from Madrid’s Atocha station, we noticed that our AVE train was aptly named the “Juan Sebastián Elcano”. Upon our arrival we went on a tour of the city, highlights of which included the Plaza de España and Parque de María Luisa, site of the 1929 Ibero-American

The title page and one of the 80 plates in the Album – Vistas de las Yslas Filipinas y Traces de sus Abitantes by José Honorato Lozano (images courtesy of the Biblioteca Nacional de España)

Exposition; the Cathedral (which has the tomb of Christopher Columbus!); the Giralda; and the Real Alcázar, a former Moorish fortress rebuilt by the Spanish kings after the expulsion of the Moors as a palace in the Mudéjar style with Christian motifs (now probably better known as a location in Game of Thrones). The next day, the highlight of our Sevilla trip was a visit to the Archivo General de Indias, the repository of all things that had to do with Hispanic America and the Philippines. We were met by Dra. Ana Hernández Callejas, who is in charge of the Philippines Section of the archives, and Sr. Pedro Luengo (a longtime friend of PHIMCOS member Carlos Madrid). After a tour of the Archivo we were led to a surprise “hidden room” behind the on-going displays to look at the maps that Dra. Hernández and Sr. Luengo had chosen for us. Although photographs were not allowed in the room, high-resolution images of the maps can be downloaded online. The maps selected included one of the river systems and towns of Cagayan Province, Demostración y mapa del río de Cagaián, hecho de orden del Illustrísimo y Reverendísimo Señor Maestro Don Fray Francisco de la Cuesta …, dated 1719; Mapa de la isla de Mindanao, donde se fundó el presidio de Zamboang, a map of Mindanao dated c1683; and Mapa de la bahía de Manila y ensenada de Súbic, a map of Manila Bay with Cavite and Subic dated 1715.

˂ Mapa de la isla de Mindanao …

c1683 (image courtesy of the Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla)

Having looked at the maps we went to see the Archivo’s on-going quincentennial exhibition El Viaje Más Largo – La Primera Vuelta al Mundo. The exhibition recounted the voyage of Magellan and Elcano, the logistics involved, and the difficulties, triumphs and tragedies that occurred during the first circumnavigation of the world. After the Archivo de las Indias, we made our way to the Fundación Nao Victoria, a non-profit organization with its own exhibition commemorating the first circumnavigation, located on the bank of the Guadalquivir river within sight of Magellan’s point of departure. This time, the point of view was that of the Nao Victoria, Magellan’s ship, recounting her adventures as a first-person narrative. The exhibition, aimed at students and younger children, had many interactive features; with Sra. Guadalupe Hernández guiding our group, it was a great exhibition for adults as well. The morning ended with a lavish lunch at José Luís Inchausti’s seafood restaurant La Moneda. In the afternoon there was time for shopping, and some of us went to a lively performance at the Museo del Baile Flamenco.

ᴧ PHIMCOS at the Archivo General de Indias, with Sr. Pedro Luengo and Dra. Ana Hernández Callejas (respectively second and third from left)

˂ Demostración y mapa del río de Cagaián 1719

(image courtesy of the Archivo General de Indias)

PHIMCOS at the Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer, with Prof. Agustín Hernando (fourth from left)

Barcelona While some of the group opted to end the tour in Sevilla, seven of us flew on to Barcelona the following day. On arrival we were met by Prof. Agustín Hernando from the University of Barcelona, who took us to visit the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya. There our host, Sra. Blanca Reyes Camps of the Unitat Gràfica, showed us a beautiful early-19th century atlas containing a manuscript copy of the Murillo Velarde map, a Plano de la Ciudad de Manila dated 1819, and 35 maps of the Philippine provinces mostly lithographed in Manila by the firm of [Baltasar] Giraudier y Ortega. We also saw a map that none of us had encountered before: Mapa de las Islas Filipinas formado expresamente para “El Correo Español” Por el Topógrafo D. José Mendez of c1883. After a walk through the old town we repaired to the terrace on the roof of the Hotel 1898 to admire the panoramic view of Barcelona over pinchos and drinks; the hotel is in the renovated former headquarters of the Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas S.A., designed by Catalan architect Josep Oriol Mestres and built in 1881. The next day we drove to Vilanova i la Geltrú to visit the Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer, founded in 1884 by the eponymous Catalan politician and author. Unfortunately, because it was a Saturday when we saw the library, we could not view any of its maps; however, the museum has an important collection of objects from the Philippines that came from expositions such as that organized in 1878 by the Anthropological Society of Paris and the Philippine General Exposition in Madrid in 1887. We were particularly pleased to see Juan Luna’s paintings Una Mestiza and Les Ignorés. References

On the way back we stopped for a relaxed lunch at the Torres winery in Vilafranca de Penedes where, before leaving, wines were bought. Returning to Barcelona, shopping continued for some of us at the annual second-hand book fair, held in booths built along the famous ramblas. The last day of our tour started with a tour of Barcelona, including Antoni Gaudí’s Basílica de la Sagrada Família, Montjuïc hill, and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, where the collection of Romanesque art (largely assembled from 11th to 13th century churches in the Pyrenees) is particularly impressive. After a final celebratory seafood lunch at the gallego Restaurante Botafumeiro, we wrapped up the week at the Museu Maritím, housed in the former royal arsenal. Among the comprehensive exhibits covering the history of navigation and the Spanish Navy, we were happy to discover several portolan charts and a reproduction of the famous “Catalan Atlas”, a mappa mundi created in 1375 by the Majorcan cartographer Abraham Cresques. The whole tour had been a resounding success, and we profusely thank Don Alfredo, all who helped in the logistics and organization of our visits, and the curators and librarians who generously contributed their time to show us so many of their cartographic treasures. As for the next PHIMCOS tour – nos vemos en Mexico. Andale! 

(1) “José Rizal in Present-Day Madrid”: https://www.philembassymadrid.com/rizal-madrid (2) See “Earthquakes and Calamities in the Philippines through colonial written sources and maps of the 17th & 18th centuries” by Jorge Mojarro, in The Murillo Bulletin Issue No. 7, p. 28. (3) See “The Mapping of Philippine Provinces” by Christian Perez, in The Murillo Bulletin Issue No. 4, p. 18. (4) Myles A. Garcia, “Discovering a Long-Lost 19th Century Filipino Master Painter”: http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/discovering-a-long-lost-19th-century-filipino-master-painter

Fine & R are Antique Maps, Sea Charts, Town Views & Atlases

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Addenda et Corrigenda by the Editor

N HIS ARTICLE “Baguio – The City of Pines” (Issue No. 8), Jonathan Wattis stated that one of the earliest cartographic appearances of Baguio is on an untitled Spanish map of Luzon of c1898. It has now become apparent that the map in question was copied from the Carta Itineraria de la Isla de Luzon by Don Anselmo Olleros, published in 1882 (see front cover). This was one of the maps shown to the PHIMCOS delegation when we visited the Archivo Topográfico y Cartoteca of the Instituto Geográfico Nacional in Madrid in September. As named on the map, Olleros was Teniente Coronel de E. M. del Ejercito de Filipinas (lieutenant-colonel on the general staff (estado mayor) of the Spanish army in the Philippines), and was quite probably familiar with the headquarters of the Comandancia Politico Militar (military district) of Benguet located at La Trinidad to the northwest of Baguio.

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Detail of Baguio from Carta Itineraria de la Isla de Luzon by Anselmo Olleros (1882) (Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Madrid)

In my own article “British Naval Cartography in the Philippines during the Napoleonic Wars” (also Issue No. 8) I wrote that the Chart of the Philippine Islands, from the Spanish Chart 1808, published in London by Aaron Arrowsmith on 6th June 1812, was copied from Felipe Bauzá’s two-sheet Carta General del Archipiélago De Filipinas (published in Madrid in 1808), but with notable changes to the Surigao Isles taken from manuscript charts made by Charles Maitland R.N. from his surveys in H.M.S. Psyche in 1809.

Details of Surigao from the first and second states of Chart of the Philippine Islands by Aaron Arrowsmith (1812)

images © British Library Board (left) and © Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library (right)

I had assumed that the copy of Arrowsmith’s chart held in the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library (http://maps.bpl.org/id/14679), which shows the revised charting of Surigao, was the first state of the chart, and that the state with “Additions to 1818” (including revisions to Appo Shoal, Busvagon and the Calamianes) was the second state. However, Andoni Aboitiz has now discovered that the British Library holds a copy of the chart (ref. Maps 89816 (3) – see back cover) which has the same date and publisher’s imprint – “London, Published 6.th June, 1812. By A. Arrowsmith Hydrographer to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales No. 10 Soho Square.” – but copies the Bauzá chart without any revisions to Surigao. As there is no indication that the British Library’s copy is a proof, the implication is that theirs in the first state, the one in Boston (which makes no mention of corrections) is the second state, and the one with “Additions to 1818” is in fact the third state of this quite rare chart of the Philippines.

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In another of my articles, “Naming Scarborough Shoal: A New and Correct Chart of the Coast of China” (Issue No. 4), I postulated that A New and Correct Chart of the Coast of China … Including Formosa, Hayman and the Philippine Islands. Sold by W. & I. Mount and T. & T. Page was published in c1753, and was therefore probably the first chart to give the Bajo de Masinloc its English name of Scarborough Shoal. However, Nick Trimming of Daniel Crouch Rare Books has pointed out that “T. & T. Page” are in fact Thomas Page II and Thomas Page III, and consequently the chart can be dated to the period between c1753 (the year in which Thomas Page III entered the firm) and 1762 (the year in which Thomas Page II died).

Untitled manuscript chart of the China Sea from the Ligtende zeefakkel atlas by Gerrit de Haan (image courtesy of the National Archives of the Netherlands)

Bugis pirate map c1820 (image courtesy Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht)

This implies that the first appearance of the name Scarborough Shoal was equally likely to have been on William Herbert’s chart A correct Chart of the China Seas Containing the Coasts of Tsiompa Cochin China the Gulf of Tonquin Part of the Coast of China and the Philippin Islands, first published in London in 1758. Herbert’s chart was derived from one in the 1745 edition of Le Neptune Oriental by J-B.N.D. D’Après de Mannevillette (which shows Scarborough Shoal as the “B[aie] de Marsingola”). Trimming also identified the Dutch chart copied by Mount & Page. as a detailed but untitled, manuscript chart of the Bight of Tonkin, Hainan, southern coast of China, Formosa and Luzon in Gerrit de Haan’s atlas Ligtende zeefakkel off de geheele Oost Indische Waterweereldt …, put together in 1760-61 and now in the National Archives of the Netherlands (Nationaal Archief: Inventaris nr. 156.1.9). Gerrit de Haan was the chief chartmaker (Baas-Kaartenmaker) for the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), in charge of a team of

cartographers in the VOC’s workshop in Batavia from 1747 to 1769. On 7 November, 2019 a second, almost identical manuscript chart (dated 1759 on the back) was sold at Christie’s in London for ₤100,000. On these Dutch charts the shoal is also named “B: Marsingula”.

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When PHIMCOS visited the Sala de Investigación of the Archivo del Museo Naval in Madrid, the most unusual map we saw was one of Southeast Asia made by Bugis seafarers and captured from pirates from Jolo. The map, copied from a Dutch chart but with all the names written in Bugis, had been sent to the Museo Naval in Madrid in 1847. Another very similar Bugis pirate map is in the library of Utrecht University (Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht: KAART: *VIII* C.a.2 (Dk39-8)). This chart, said to date from c1820, is in better condition than the one in the Museo Naval, and slightly larger (76 x 105cm). Both are manuscript charts, drawn on parchment in ink, with watercolour highlights.

Five such Bugis charts are known to have been recovered, but only these two (in Madrid and Utrecht) have survived. Another, last seen in Batavia (Jakarta) in 1935, had been found by a Dutch naval officer in 1859 in a pirate compound on Sumatra but is now missing. The whereabouts of the other two – one recorded in the library of the orientalist William Marsden in London, and one in the collection of the Dutch Bible Society – are also unknown. An extensive description and analysis of these maps by Joseph E Schwartzberg can be read in “Southeast Asian Nautical Maps” in The History of Cartography, Volume 2.2, Chapter 19 (The University of Chicago Press, 1994). He notes that the maps include abundant toponymic detail in the language and script of the Bugis, as well as hundreds of depth soundings given in Arabic numerals written in the Western style. “Almost all the information on the maps relates to features on or near the coast. Along many stretches of coast, highlands are drawn in frontal elevation, as they would be seen from the sea, and descriptive notes appear along some of them. Within the seas, features such as shoals, shallows, marine banks, and sea depths are shown in considerable detail.” The maps “appear to have been adapted from one or

more European prototypes”, probably Dutch or English, including the charts published by Johannes Van Keulen II, the Gerrit de Haan atlas (mentioned above), and British maps obtained from Thomas Forrest during the years he spent sailing around New Guinea, the Moluccas, Borneo and Mindanao. In Vol. II of The Literary Magazine and British Review for 1793, Forrest wrote of the Bugis: They are fond of sea charts, I have given many to certain Noquedas (commanders of prows) for which they were very grateful, and often wrote names of places in their own language, which I read to them on the charts; and they were always very inquisitive about Europe, and Neegree Telinga (Indostan) … . Long before the passage round the Cape [of Good Hope] was discovered, … in those days before Dutch oppression, the Buggesses certainly traded largely to most of the eastern islands, in their own manufactures, and held many of them in subjection.

Schwartzberg concludes that “we can take it as established that Bugis navigators appreciated maps and had little difficulty understanding those of foreign origin. … But when they and neighboring seafaring peoples of Southeast Asia began to make maps on their own is a question that calls for additional comment”.

The Story of the “Croquis de la Isla de Mindanao” Havana 1898 by Christian Perez

HE Croquis de la Isla de Mindanao is a subtly-coloured map that shows no date, no author’s name, and no place of printing or publication. It was reproduced from a manuscript map using a mimeograph printing process that became widely used towards the end of the 19th century. The printed area measures 53 cm x 49 cm. The French word croquis refers to an informal sketch (and is so used in English), but in Spanish it connotes a technical drawing rather than a sketch.

The map depicts a largely accurate shoreline but is less accurate with regard to mountain ranges and rivers. It shows the administrative boundaries between politico-military districts with, at bottom-left, a description of the territorial divisions of the island, the military ranks of the Mindanao commander-general based in Zamboanga and the governors of the 12 politico-military districts, and five military comandancias. The map was clearly made with a military outlook, but also provides the names

Croquis de la Isla de Mindanao by Benito Francia and Julian González, Havana, 1898 (1)

The book provides extensive details about the geography, geology, climate, flora, fauna, population, ethnic groups and history of Mindanao. It may not be an easy read for the casual reader, but can be an invaluable resource for a scholar of Mindanao.

Detail from Croquis de la Isla de Mindanao (1)

of the main ethnic groups in Mindanao and the boundaries between those groups. Las Islas Filipinas – Mindanao The map was published in Havana, Cuba, in 1898 within Las Islas Filipinas – Mindanao – Con varios documentos inéditos y un mapa, a twovolume book by Benito Francia y Ponce de León and Julián González Parrado. The map was folded and inserted at the back of Volume II. As indicated in the title page, the book was printed at the Imp. de la Subinspección de Infantería, the infantry printing press.

The title page provides information about the authors: Francia was a senior medical doctor of the army and chief of civil administration in the Philippines; González was a general of division and commander-general of Mindanao and Jolo. The page following the title pages is a dedication to D. Ramón Blanco y Erenas, Marqués de Peña Plata, who was GovernorGeneral of the Philippines from 1893 to 1896, and Captain-General of Cuba in 1897-98. The next page is a single paragraph with a rather mysterious statement: “This book was due for publication at the beginning of 1897, but could not see the light before 1898 for reasons beyond the control of the authors.” A page at the end of Volume II is also a single paragraph with the statement: “The circumstances of the printing of this book prevented the authors from personally correcting noted errors, particularly in proper nouns.” Soft cover and inside title page of ˂ Las Islas Filipinas – Mindanao Tomo II (1) ѵ

Benito Francia and Julián González Why would a book on Mindanao be printed in Cuba in 1898? That is the mystery I will try to elucidate by looking at the lives of its two authors.

Benito Francia y Ponce de León (2)

Benito Francia (3) was a medical doctor appointted to the Spanish Navy in 1874. As a Navy doctor he travelled extensively around the world, including the Philippines. He became so well-acquainted with the country during that period that in 1887 he was appointed royal commissioner for the Exposición de Filipinas in Madrid. In 1893 he became Chief of Civil Administration in the Philippines until 1897, when he left to become Secretary General of the Government of Puerto Rico. Francia presumably wrote the book together with González during his four years in the Philippines. Julián González (4) was a military man assigned in 1882 to the Philippines as Politico-Military Governor of Sulu. In 1888 he returned to Spain and was posted at the General Direction of the Infantry in Madrid. In 1892 he was sent back to the Philippines as Commander-General of Mindanao, based in Zamboanga, until May 1896 when he had to return to Spain for health reasons. In October 1897, having recovered, he was appointed Second Captain-General in Havana, following his superior Ramón Blanco. In August 1898 he became president of the Cuba Evacuation Commission that was set up as part of the Paris Peace Protocol signed between Spain and the United States earlier that month. On 6 December 1898, just four days before the

Julián González Parrado (5)

signature of the Treaty of Paris, he left Cuba and embarked for Spain. González wrote the book and drew the map, together with Francia, during his stay in Zamboanga from 1892 to 1896. It seems that being based in Mindanao, and being older than his co-author, he may have taken the lead role and should probably be considered the main author. Printing and distribution of the book Based on González’s life during the relevant period we can reconstruct the story of the book. González probably brought the manuscript text and map with him to Spain in 1896, kept them while he was recovering from his illness, then brought them to Havana in October 1897. He had access to the infantry printing press and arranged to have the book and the map printed, probably during the early weeks of 1898. With the events that started in mid-February 1898, printing a map of Mindanao would probably not have been a high priority for Spanish army officers in Cuba. The U.S.S. Maine was sunk in Havana harbour (in mysterious circumstances) on 15 February 1898, and war was formally declared between Spain and the 19

United States in April. As president of the Cuba Evacuation Commission, González could easily arrange for all the printed copies of the book to be safely shipped back to Spain. We can visualise him embarking on 6 December, 1898 with a trunk full of printed books. The total number of copies printed and shipped to Spain must have been relatively low, perhaps

not more than about 100 copies. Today few copies of the book are in private hands; I have seen only one on the market in the past 25 years (the one in my collection)(6). Most copies are in public libraries.(7) It seems probable that the book was not sold commercially but copies were instead donated to various libraries worldwide by Julián González after his arrival in Spain in 1898.

This article is based on the presentation given to PHIMCOS by the author on 14 August, 2019. Sources & Notes (1)

Biblioteca AECID; digital library of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs: http://bibliotecadigital.aecid.es/bibliodig/es/consulta/registro.cmd?id=7004

(2)

Photograph of Benito Francia from http://www.ejeadigital.com/index.php?sec=1&id=2065

(3)

See Benito Francia y Ponce de León, un médico singular de la Armada by Manuel Gracia Rivas, Revista de Historia Naval Año XXIX Núm. 115, Instituto de Historia y Cultura Naval, Armada Española (2011).

(4)

Website of the Real Academia de la Historia: http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/70008/julian-gonzalez-parrado

(5)

Photograph of Julián González from La Ilustración Artística, Año XIV, Barcelona 25 de Marzo de 1895, Núm 691 (image courtesy of Biblioteca Nacional de España).

(6)

Another copy in private hands in the Philippines was lost in a fire some years ago.

(7)

In the Philippines copies are held by the Lopez Foundation Library, the Ortigas Foundation Library, and the University of Santo Tomas Library; internet searches have located copies in libraries around the world including the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid; Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Madrid; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; Université Rennes 2, Rennes; National Library of Australia, Canberra; State Library of NSW, Sydney; Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; New York Public Library; and 18 other university and public libraries in the United States.

The Selden Map of China – A New Understanding of the Ming Dynasty reviewed by the Editor The Selden Map of China – A New Understanding of the Ming Dynasty by Hongping Annie Nie Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2019 ISBN 9781851245246; HB without dust jacket, 74 pp., 43 maps & images in full colour; £20

HE SELDEN map of China (known in China as the “Nautical Chart of the Eastern and Western Seas”) is an extraordinary item of cartography, described by Hongping Annie Nie as “a nautical chart [which] can also be appreciated as a beautiful landscape painting”. The earliest large Chinese nautical chart to have survived from the Ming dynasty, the manuscript map (which measures 158 cm x 96 cm) covers an area from Siberia and Japan in the north to Sumatra and Java in the south. Atypically, the Chinese mainland is placed in the upper left portion of the map, which is centred on the South China Sea. Even more unusual, and noteworthy, is the network of black lines depicting the maritime trade routes in the Ming dynasty. In 2014 Nie’s monograph was released online as a PDF file, and it is fitting that it has now been lightly revised and published by the Bodleian Library as a slim, elegant and well-illustrated hardback book. In five chapters, Nie gives an overview of the map itself, discusses its importance as a synthesis of Chinese and Western cartography, and places it in the historical context of Ming dynasty maritime trade. The first chapter relates how the map, bequeathed to the Bodleian by the lawyer and scholar John Selden in 1659 and rediscovered by the American historian Robert Batchelor only in 2008, required extensive restoration over a period of two years. Stabilised, relined and infilled with dyed Chinese paper, the map has since featured in two important exhibitions at the library (Treasures of the Bodleian in 2011 and Talking Maps in 2019); was displayed in Hong Kong in 2014; and has been on show at the National Library in Singapore this year.

The second chapter discusses the map as a cartographic work of art, including its painting of landscapes, topographical features and flora in six colours, and compares it with other Chinese maps including the Zheng He nautical chart. Particularly interesting features are the Chinese compass rose, scale ruler and orientating map frame at the top of the map, which mark the first Chinese cartographic attempt to show geographical relationships including direction and distance. The chapter concludes with a description of the 16 eastern and two western shipping routes shown on the map, running from Fujian to Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Timor, and beyond. The origins of the Selden map are still a mystery; there is no consensus among scholars as to exactly when, where, by whom or for whom it was made, or how it came to be acquired by Selden. In the third chapter Nie expounds a number of theories of the origins and history of the map, and relates how it was catalogued by Thomas Hyde, the then librarian-in-chief at the Bodleian, with the help of the visiting Chinese Catholic Shen Fuzong. The following section looks at the development of Chinese maritime trade throughout the Ming dynasty, including navigational and shipbuilding technology, the

shown has been cropped so that the wood (in what is now Thailand) is missing. Caption no. 15 reads “map … engraved by Robert Beckit for John Wolfe’s English translation of Linschoten’s Itinerario”, but the accompanying photograph is of the original Dutch map, engraved by Hendrik and Arnold van Langren. And caption no. 17 “Dutch population described on the Selden map of China” is opposite a detail of the map showing Luzon, where there was no Dutch presence; in fact the map itself does show the “Dutch place”, but this is in Ternate, well to the south of the captioned image.

The Selden Map (image © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)

imperial tribute system, private foreign trade, piracy, smuggling, and the galleon trade in silk, porcelain and silver via Manila. Nie concludes her book with “A New Understanding of the Ming Dynasty”, in which she states that “the rediscovery of the Selden map has overturned hitherto popular misconceptions about the Ming dynasty and urges us to see China in a very different light”. During the dynasty social attitudes in China changed, Western science and technology penetrated the country (alongside Catholicism), blue-and-white porcelain became a major export, new foods were introduced from the New World, a Chinese diaspora spread across Southeast Asia, powerful sea merchants began to engage in court politics, and China entered the global economy. The Selden map is evidence that in the 17th century Chinese seafarers and merchants were active traders in the vibrant maritime economy of the Orient, and enabled China to participate in the emergence of world trade. The book’s only significant flaw is the inaccuracy of some of the captions, perhaps introduced because the images to which they relate were amended or replaced after the captions were written. For example, image no. 12 is said to depict a wood, but the detail of the Selden map

The Selden map has generated a substantial amount of literature. In Mr Selden’s Map of China: The Spice Trade, a Lost Chart & the South China Sea (Profile Books, 2013) Timothy Brook gives a vivid account of John Selden, his map, and the world it depicts; London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City (University of Chicago Press, 2014) by Robert K. Batchelor uses the map’s shipping routes to underpin an academic analysis of how changes in East Asia made London into a global city; and the weightiest publication, Mapping Ming China’s Maritime World: The Selden Map and Other Treasures from the University of Oxford (Hong Kong Maritime Museum, 2015), contains the bilingual proceedings of an international symposium on the subject. Scholarly articles include “The Construction of the Selden Map: Some Conjectures” by Stephen Davies (Imago Mundi vol.65, no.1, 2013) and “The origins of the Selden map of China: scientific analysis of the painting materials and techniques using a holistic approach” by Sotiria Kogou et al. (Heritage Science, 2016). Anyone interested in Asian cartography but unfamiliar with the Selden map should, however, start with Hongping Annie Nie’s book. Not only is the text both informative and easy to read, but the numerous images and elegant graphics make this attractive volume the perfect introduction to a highly-important map. I also recommend the book as a worthy and desirable addition to the library of any serious sinologist or enthusiastic cartophile. The Editor thanks the International Map Collectors' Society for permission to reprint this review, which was first published in the IMCoS Journal Issue No. 159 (December 2019).

Nomadic Papua by Richard T. Jackson

RE WE cartophiles control freaks? Or are we hopeless romantics? There is ample evidence to answer ‘yes’ to both questions. We are (or at least I am) boyishly reckless when suddenly confronted with a map we know we have to possess, brushing aside the fact that our bank manager will be very displeased to learn of any steps taken to realise this desire. The sensation I can get seeing, for the first time, a foxed, badly printed and slightly torn, four hundred year old piece of paper is often no less stirring than that which swept over me as a youth thunderstruck by a girl’s smile. Our imaginations run riot at the possibilities of lands far away, in place or in time, or of unattainable partners. But simultaneously, are not maps the very essence of order, neatness, and of putting things in their place? And of reducing lands and people to regular sheets and grids that can be carefully and accurately catalogued, digitised and stored, with full provenance often assured? Conversely, nothing perhaps is quite as frustrating to a cartophile as a place which appears to have moved its location from one place on a map to elsewhere on another during the lapse of time between the dates of production of the two maps.

(toponym), a racial identifier (ethnonym), the name of a language group and, in the Philippines, the name of a vine and a term used in the literature on DNA analysis. These usages often contradict one another, and the use of Papua as an ethnonym or toponym has frequently had an exactly opposite meaning to earlier or later usage. As just one example of the change in the ethnonymic use of ‘Papuan’, in southeastern New Guinea for the first 80 years or so of the 19th century all the navigators and explorers of that area referred to the land as ‘New Guinea’ and divided its peoples into two groups: ‘Papuans’ and ‘Malay types’ (never ‘New Guineans’). In 1873-74 Captain John Moresby completed the first full draft of his map of coastal New Guinea. But Moresby’s use of ethnonyms differed from those previously adopted by Joseph Jukes (3) and John MacGillivray (4). In his eyes: “the inhabitants of the Torres Strait Islands are black Papuans like those of the opposite New Guinea coast”, who were “quite uncivilized and unclothed”.(5)

This article is concerned with one such apparently nomadic place: Papua .(1) Of course, Papua as a particular piece of land did not itself move. But the places cartographers, administrators and travellers decided to call ‘Papua’ certainly did; over the past five centuries, mapmakers have scattered ‘Papuas’ across their maps like confetti, and even to this day continue to do so. This is confusing. The multiplicity of ‘Papuas’ Alex Golub (2) may be slightly overstating matters when he states that “Papua is a random word with an unclear history [which] has been used for all sorts of things without any logic or reason”, but fundamentally I agree with him. ‘Papua’ has been used as a placename

Captain John Moresby by Maull & Fox, London (image courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France)

However, after Moresby’s ship H.M.S. Basilisk “stood across the Gulf of Papua for Redscar Bay” (6) he was: surprised to see that these people differed totally from the tall, muscular, fierce-looking, naked black Papuans we had left in the Torres Strait. These men were more of the Malay type – small, lithe, copper-coloured people, with clean, well-cut features and a pleasing expression of countenance. They wore their own hair … frizzled out mop-fashion and were slightly tattooed with stars and small figures on the breast and shoulders as I have never seen on the black Papuans.(7)

Moresby liked these ‘non-Papuans’. Lower down the coast at the harbour he named after his father “nothing could exceed the kindness of the natives”(7) even if their mouths were “much disfigured by constant use of the betel-nut”.(7) He placed the approximate border between ‘Papuans’ and ‘Malay types’ in the vicinity of Cape Possession. To emphasise the differences that he perceived between these two peoples, he appended an account of an affray among the Papuans and suggested that: the reader may contrast … the fierce, bloody natures of the black Papuans of west New Guinea with the mild, comparatively inoffensive manners of the race inhabiting the eastern end of the great island.(8)

However, when in 1901 the Australian Parliament started debating the legislation that would enact the takeover of the then protectorate of British New Guinea from Britain, the resulting act of parliament was named the Papua Act 1905.(9) The ‘true Papuans’, said one speaker who seemingly had not read any of the explorers’ reports, were the very people Moresby had called ‘Malay types’. If one asks a modern resident of Papua New Guinea to describe a ‘Papuan’, they will provide a picture of one of Moresby’s “small, lithe, copper-coloured people”. In contrast, the description of a ‘Papuan’ provided by the average Indonesian will be close to Moresby’s “tall, muscular, fierce-looking” folk. So even in modern times the word ‘Papuan’, as an ethnonym, conjures up exactly opposite portraits on each side of the international border between Indonesia and PNG. 24

Early usage of the toponym / ethnonym J.H.F Sollewijn Gelpke, the last governor of the Netherlands New Guinea, produced a number of excellent papers on Papuan and Moluccan matters in his retirement. In his paper dealing with the origins of the word ‘Papua’ (10) he comments that: “Few writers on New Guinea have resisted the urge to volunteer in passing an etymological anecdote on the name ‘Papua’.” Gelpke proceeds to throw serious doubt on the usual explanation of the origins of the word as being derived from a Malay word meaning ‘frizzled hair’ (and implying black-skinned) since no word resembling ‘papua’ with such a meaning could be found in the many Malay dictionaries he consulted. He offers an alternative explanation, viz. that it derives from a phrase in the language of the people of Biak, an island lying off the Bird’s Head Peninsula of New Guinea: ‘sup i papwa’ (below the sunset). Whilst having great respect for Gelpke’s work, I am not entirely convinced by it as a result of my tracking the use of ‘Papua’ as an ethnonym / toponym. Commenting on a c1512 map of the Moluccan Islands and nearby areas by Francisco Rodrigues,(11) Gelpke states: Clearly, Rodrigues copied the north coast of Ceram, the Moluccas and other islands from older Malayan and Javanese charts … To the east of the Clove Islands his map depicts a large island that can only be Halmahera [Gilolo]. It bears the inscription ‘Jhla de Papoia e a Jente della sam cafres’ (the island of Papoia whose people are kaffirs).(12)

One might think that if the map was copied from earlier Malay charts, then the term ‘Papoia’ also came from them and was, therefore, a Malay appellation. Indeed, António Galvão was to observe in 1557 that: “… The Moluccans call those people ‘os Papuas’ because they are black and have frizzled hair, and the Portuguese also call them so, because they copied the name from the [Moluccans].”(13) That aside, the southeastern portion of Gilolo was known for many years afterwards as being an area occupied by non-Malay peoples, and seems to have been the area under the control of the “Raya Papua … .exceedingly rich in gold” described by Antonio Pigafetta, the chronicler of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition of 1521.(14)

A year or so later, Tomé Pires noted that “near Banda there are three islands, Ceram, Aru and Papua”.(15) Martin de Uriarte explored the eastern coast of Gilolo in 1527 and later reported the existence of eight islands lying approximately 100 km southeast of that island’s southern tip called ‘Las islas de las Papuas’.(16) Gelpke is of the view that these must include Gebe, Gag and other islands close to the Bird’s Head Peninsula. In the following year Álvaro de Saavedra also hove to, waiting for a favourable wind, “en unas islas de negros, que llaman Papuas” (in some islands of negroes, called Papuans) to the east of Gilolo.(17) In Gelpke’s opinion both Rodrigues and Pires “unambiguously understood ‘Papua’ as the name of an island”.(18) This may well be true given that neither seems to have come across more than one ‘Ihla Papuas’ or any ‘Papuan’; in any case when more than one island called ‘Papua’ appeared, or when travellers met ‘Papuans’, it seems improbable that it would have been realised that the presumed toponym was in fact an ethnonym. The first European to observe the multiplicity of the places named ‘Papua’ across the Moluccas appears to have been Andrés de Urdaneta. After his enforced eight-year stay in the Moluccas, under guard and with all his papers and maps confiscated by the Portuguese, on his return to Spain Urdaneta reconstructed those documents and, in 1537, wrote up his account of the expedition led by Garcia Jofre de Loaísa in 1525-26 and its aftermath.

To quote from Urdaneta’s account (as edited by Torres de Mendoza more than three centuries later): Al Este desta dicha isla de Batachina [Gilolo] hay otras muchas islas, que se llaman las Papuas, y la gente dellas son todos negros, de cabello revuelto como guineos, e todos son flecheros. Destas islas llevan oro a Bachian [an island on the west coast of Gilolo], aunque es poco, empero es fino; las dichas islas de Papuas son muchas por dicho de los Indios.(17)

This is paraphrased by Gelpke as ”there are many other islands called ‘las Papuas’ … those ‘islas de Papuas’ are many”. It is worth observing that the ‘negros ... como guineos’ seem to have lingered rather vividly in Urdaneta’s memory. This would help(19) explain why, when 38 years after having first set foot in the Moluccas, he declined leadership of what was to be the expedition led by Miguel López de Legaspi in 1564, he nevertheless joined it having lobbied, he probably thought successfully, for that expedition’s principal goal to be to sail to the heartland of the Papuans, by then named New Guinea, with the Philippines being only a secondary objective. It was only when out at sea for several days that Legaspi opened his orders, changed his course a few degrees north of his original route, and headed for Cebu and the conquest of the Philippines in 1565. Detail from Maris Pacifici, (quod vulgo Mar del Zur) by Abraham Ortelius, (1590) 1612 (Peter Geldart collection)

Detail from India quæ Orientalis dicitur et Insulæ Adiacentes by Willem Blaeu, (1635) c1640 (Peter Geldart collection)

Not all early visitors to the Moluccas adopted the term ‘Papua’ to describe the region’s nonMalay inhabitants. In 1516 Andreas Corsali remarked in a letter to his patrons, the Medicis of Florence, that from the spice islands of the Moluccas: “… navigating towards the east they say there lies the land of the Piccinacoli”. (20) This is rather ambiguous because who are the ‘they’ who say this? He travelled in the company of the Portuguese; would they have used such an Italianate word? Certainly, it was beyond unlikely to have been passed onto him by any local informant. It appears that he invented the term himself – and to this day it is by no means clear what he meant by it. Some say ‘Piccinacoli’ refers to birds of paradise, but most believe it describes people (even though Corsali never saw the ‘Land of the Piccinacoli’ for himself). Even so, his ‘Piccinacoli’ appeared on European maps showing New Guinea for more than a century afterwards.(21) ‘ ‘Piccinacoli’ is nevertheless of interest, since Corsali’s invention indicates that not all Europeans at first adopted pre-existing Malay terms for indigenous peoples; they were perfectly capable of inventing their own, equally demeaning, terms.(22) However, ‘Piccinacoli’ eventually disappeared, and Papua or (for French – and even some English – cartographers) ‘Papou’ or ‘Papoo’ became the standard term to describe the people, not the land. 26

Later European travellers either widened the geographical range of ‘Papua’ and ‘Papuans’ or used ‘Papua’ solely as either an ethnonym or a toponym. As an example of ‘Papuan expansionism’, Willem Schouten and Jacob Lemaire in 1616, having sailed across the Pacific, came across the island chain off the east coast of New Ireland where the people were much darker than the Polynesians they had encountered earlier in their voyage. Like Urdaneta’s Papuans ‘todos flecheros’, they used bows and arrows: the first [use of such weapons] they had seen amongst the Indians of the South Sea … They concluded these People to be Papuans because of their hair and particular Diet of Betel mix’d with Chalk.(23)

It would surprise modern citizens of Papua New Guinea to hear that the first of their ancestors to be termed ‘Papuans’ by Europeans were the people of Lihir (named Gerrit de Nijs Island by Schouten and Lemaire) and Green Island. William Dampier provides an example of a traveller who restricted his use of ‘Papua’ to that of a toponym. What earlier commentators had referred to as ‘Papuans’ in the Moluccas, he called “shock Curl-pated New Guinea Negroes”, just as “Nova Britannia … is very well inhabited with strong, well-limb’d Negroes”.(24)

Detail from Carte d'Asie by Nicolas Sanson / Hubert Jaillot, 1674 (image courtesy of Wattis Fine Art)

Thomas Forrest, in 1774-75, tends to use ‘Papua’ almost exclusively as an ethnonym. His objective was to visit and possibly develop trade with ‘Tanna Papua’ – the ‘land of the Papuans’; he listened, sceptically, to the advice of his guide Tuan Hadjee that “being only one vessel … we ran the risk of being cut off by the Papuas”; and notes with amusement, (for he himself rather liked sago cakes) the grumbles of his Malay crew that when his rice supply was exhausted, “nanti makan roti Papua” (now we will have to eat the bread of the Papuans). Forrest recognises that: The inhabitants of the small part of Moluccan Islands I had hitherto seen were of two sorts, the long-hair’d Moors, of a copper colour, like Malays in every respect, and the mopheaded Papuas. These Papuas inhabit not only New Guinea, but the inland parts of most of the Moluccas.(25)

For Forrest, New Guinea is the island which is inhabited by Papuas – who have spread beyond the limits of that island.

‘Papua’ on early maps How did cartographers deal with the questions: (a) is Papua a place or a set of people; and (b) given that so many places were given the name, which was correct? The key time period which can be adduced in answering both questions is the decade from 1630 to 1640. Up to that period, most maps showed ‘Papua’ as a place or places located at various points in, around, or (occasionally) rather distant from the Moluccas. ‘Papua’ or ‘Papuans’ were not associated with New Guinea; that island’s people were Corsali’s ‘Piccinacoli’. After that date, with a few exceptions, Papuans were a people (sometimes with their own distinct territory, sometimes not) who lived in various parts of New Guinea. As I have not seen the original of Rodrigues’s map of ‘Papoia’, or even a good reproduction, let us simply accept Gelpke’s conclusion that his ‘Papoia’ was on the island of Halmahera (Gilolo). The various states (dating from c1561

Detail from Carte d’Asie by Guillaume Delisle / Philippe Buache, (1762) 1800 (image courtesy of Geographicus Rare Antique Maps)

to c1570) of Terza Parte Dell’Asia by Giacomo Gastaldi all show a ‘Papuas’ and a ‘Papias’. I shall return to the first of these later. The second is located in Gilolo, where Pigafetta’s ‘Raya Papua’ was met with. Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s fine map of east and southeast Asia, published in 1596 – which is generally said to be derived from the portolan charts he “removed from the ownership” of the Portuguese – labels both Ceram as a whole and one island off its northern coast as ‘Os Papua’. Both Mercator (1607) and Hondius (1610) follow van Linschoten in showing Ceram as ‘Os Papua’. As late as 1630 Theodore de Bry’s map India Orientalis labels a small island northeast of Ceram (but not Ceram itself) as ‘Os Papua’. Meanwhile, throughout this period Nova Guinea is peopled not by ‘Papuans’, but by ‘Piccinacoli’, with islands off its north coast labelled ‘I. dos Crespos’ and ‘I. Barbada’ (see note 22). A clutch of three maps, by Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1635), Henricus Hondius (1637) and Jan Jansson (1638), all restrict the use of the term ‘Papua’ to the north coast of New Guinea – well to the east of the Bird’s Head Peninsula – labelling it ‘Terra d’os Papous’ or ‘t’Landt vande Papuos’. The Blaeu and Hondius maps add ‘Nova Guinea’ but the Jansson map omits that toponym; all three show the snow-capped peak of the ‘sneebergh’. The extension of Dutch exploration is clearly being exhibited, but the price for this is that there is no longer any mention of ‘Papuas’ beyond New Guinea; the inland ‘Papuan’ peoples of the Moluccas or the ‘Papuan’ islanders off the tip of the Bird’s Head Peninsula are no longer represented. With the exception of a later map by Johannes Blaeu (1660) which recognises ‘Papuans’ on Ceram, there are from 1640 onwards virtually no mentions on European maps of ‘Papua / Papuans‘ anywhere other than on the island of New Guinea.(25) Henceforth, the challenge for cartographers boils down to how to deal with the terms ‘Papua / Papuans’ on New Guinea. Are New Guinea and Papua one and the same thing, so that either name (or both) can be placed on a map as alternatives? Or is ‘New Guinea’ the land and are ‘Papuans’ the people living there; in which case, if Papuans are a people, not a place, should they even be Detail from Terza Tavola by Giacomo Gastaldi, 1554 (Peter Geldart collection)

shown on a map? Alternatively, do ‘Papuans’ inhabit only a part of ‘New Guinea’ called ‘Papua’, which can be shown separately from ‘New Guinea’ on a map, perhaps as a separate island named ‘Papua’? In fact, no consensus was arrived at, at least between 1670 and 1830. Of the 41 maps of this period depicting the Moluccas and part or all of New Guinea which I have examined, 18 use phrases akin to ’New Guinea’ and ’Papua’ as if they were alternative names for the same land mass.(26). However, until the last years of the 18th century ‘Papua’ on its own was not used; it was always ‘Terre de [or des] Papous’, (Land of [the] Papuans) or a similar phrase implying that ‘Papous’ was an ethnonym and not a toponym. Only from the late 1790s does ’Papua’ stand alone as a toponym. Four maps of this period (all French) use the phrase ‘Nouvelle Guinée habitée par les Papuas’. At least seven maps of the period show ‘Papua’ as a distinct portion of the larger island of New Guinea while a further five show ‘Papua’ as a separate island (comprising the Bird’s Head Peninsula, cut off from the remainder of New Guinea). Finally, another seven mention only ‘New Guinea’, omitting ‘Papua’ altogether. In short, three centuries after Papua (as ‘Papoia’) first appeared on Rodrigues’s chart, cartographic conventions as to the use of the term remained messy and incomplete. ‘Papua’ was as nomadic and as fluid a term as ever. Following the colonial inflorescence of the 19th century it was to remain so, albeit in a different form; but that is another story.(27) A Papuan puzzle in the Philippines As mentioned earlier, Gastaldi’s map Terza Parte Dell’Asia, which covers the Philippines, mentions two places he calls ‘Papua’. One (‘Papias’) was in Gilolo; the other (‘Papuas’) was attached to the island now known as Negros.

Details of ‘Papuas’ and ‘Papias’ from Terza Parte Dell’Asia by Giacomo Gastaldi, c1561 (images courtesy of Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc.)

His earlier map of the region oriented to the south, Terza Tavola, first published by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in 1554, mentions only the ‘Papuas’ on Negros. If the assumption is made that ‘Papuas’ was a (probably derogatory) term by Malays for the darker skinned indigenes of the region, then its transition to the European ‘Negros’ was a neat piece of multicultural and transcultural racism. The puzzle is: what was Gastaldi’s source for this place name? The Negros ‘Papuas’ is rather distant from the Moluccas and New Guinea – indeed it is the most distant ‘Papua’ of any recorded until the naming of the Territory of Papua by Australia in 1901-05. Furthermore, I have posited that Urdaneta was the first person to observe the multiplicity of ‘Papuas’, but Gastaldi’s maps with the name appeared before Legaspi’s expedition to the Philippines. It was this expedition which applied the name ‘Negros’ to the island in April 1565, although Gastaldi’s first, rather crude map India Tercera Nova Tabula of 1548, later copied by Girolamo Ruscelli, labels a tiny island next to his ‘Cubu’ (Cebu) as ‘Negros’. The expedition to the Philippines led by Ruy López de Villalobos during 1543 (which named Samar and Leyte ‘Las Islas Filipinas’) does not appear to have approached Negros. Consequently, it would seem that the source for the name ‘Papuas’ for Negros in the Gastaldi / Ramusio map can only have been Pigafetta.

Yet while Pigafetta does talk of an island southsouthwest from Bohol en route to Mindanao occupied by “black men like those of Etiopia”, which may possibly refer to the south-eastern tip of Negros, he actually names it – not ‘Papuas’ – but ‘Panilongon’. So if Pigafetta was the source, why was not ‘Panilongon’ used by Gastaldi? The only time Pigafetta uses the term ‘Papua’ is in connection with the ‘Raya Papua’ he is told about in the Moluccas themselves, by which time he would have picked up the term from the Malays or the Portuguese. He did not apply that term to the “shaggy people [who] … eat only human hearts with the juice of oranges or lemons … called Benaian”(28) of Mindanao. So it seems unlikely that Gastaldi got the term from the Magellan expedition, but in that case, whence did it come? Perhaps I should simply leave this with Ramusio himself who observed, in his introduction to his version of the Pigafetta account: But if … there be seen any discrepancy of names and things let no one be astonished; for the bent of men’s minds is various, and one notices one thing and not another, just as the things appear most deserving of attention.(29)

This article is based on the presentation given to PHIMCOS by the author on 14th August, 2019. [see clarifications in MB Issues Nos. 10 & 12.]

Notes, Sources & References (1)

Papua is by no means the only nomadic place name in history; in classical antiquity ‘Iberia’ was a kingdom in the Caucasus as well as a peninsula in southwest Europe, and the island of St. John has meandered from place to place across and around the Philippine archipelago.

(2)

Alex Golub, Which part of New Guinea is Papua?, Quora, 2018 – see: www.quora.com/which-part-of-New-Guinea-is-Papua.

(3)

Joseph B. Jukes, Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H.M.S. Fly, T. & W. Boone, London, 1847. In this record of Captain F.P. Blackwood’s expedition to the Torres Strait, New Guinea, and other islands of the Eastern Archipelago, Jukes talks of ‘Papuans’ and ‘Malay types’.

(4)

John MacGillivray, Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, T. &W. Boone, London, 1852. MacGillivray also talks of ‘Papuans’ and ‘Malay types’ in this record of Captain Owen Stanley’s expedition to New Guinea and the Louisiade Archipelago, albeit with the following (in my view accurate) observation (p. 275): “It would be difficult to state the peculiarities of the Papuan race … for even their features exhibit nearly as many differences as exist in a miscellaneous collection of individuals of any European nation.”

(5)

John Moresby, R.N., Discoveries & Surveys in New Guinea and the D’Entrecasteaux Islands, John Murray, London, 1876, pp. 24 & 131 respectively.

(6)

This clause is of some significance for it is amongst the first references (if not the first) to the ‘Gulf of Papua’ in the literature of New Guinea exploration. The charts from Blackwood’s surveys include no term for this portion of sea; those accompanying Owen Stanley’s surveys contain the name ‘Great Bight of New Guinea’. But the Hydrographic Office chart Coral Sea and Great Barrier Reefs Sheet 2 (chart no. 2764), published in 1860, used by Moresby, and compiled by Captain Sir Frederick J. Evans (former Master of Blackwood’s H.M.S. Fly and future Hydrographer of the Navy), specifies a ‘Gulf of Papua’. This appears to be the first recorded use of the term ‘Papua’ in this part of the New Guinea seas at such a distance from its original usage. If indeed this chart was the first to use ‘Gulf of Papua’, then Captain Evans has a great deal to answer for.

(7)

Moresby op cit, pp. 137 & 176 respectively.

(8)

Moresby op cit, pp. 317.

(9)

See Hansard (Parliament of Australia) 1901-1905.

(10) J.H.F. Sollewijn Gelpke, “On the origin of the name Papua” in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania) No. 149 (2), Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden, 1993. (11) The first map thought to have shown parts of the Philippines was a large manuscript chart by the cartographer Francisco Rodrigues, the pilot on the first Portuguese expedition to the Spice Islands commanded by Alfonso de Albuquerque in 1511. Although referred to in a letter from Albuquerque to King Manuel of Portugal, the chart itself was lost at sea. (12) Gelpke op cit, p.322. (13) António Galvão, Tratado dos Descobrimentos (The Discoveries of the World), edited by C.R.D. Bethune, Hakluyt Society (I) XXX, London, 1862, p. 177. (14) Antonio Pigafetta, First voyage around the World, and Maximilianus Transylvanus, De Moluccis Insulis, Filipiniana Book Guild, Manila, 1969, p. 68. (15) Tomé Pires, Suma Oriental, edited by Armando Cortesão, Hakluyt Society (II) LXXXIX & XC, London, 1944. It was later to transpire that Aru was almost totally settled by Papuans and that the central portions of Ceram – like those of several other Moluccan islands – were also occupied by Papuans. (16) Martín Fernández de Navarette, Coleccion de los viajes y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del sieglo XV, Imprenta Nacional, Madrid, 1837-80, pp. 287-8. (17) Luis Torres de Mendoza (editor), Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de America y Oceanía, sacados de los Archivos del Reino, y muy especialmente del de Indias, Madrid, 1866, vol. V, p. 63. (18) Gelpke op cit, p.323. Pires also reported, with considerable scepticism – a feature of his report usually neglected by its later critical users – that it was said that some Papuans had ears so big that they wrapped themselves up in them when cold. This was one of the first of a long series of ethnic insults outsiders have heaped (and continue to heap) on the people of New Guinea. (19) But perhaps only help, as he also is said to have believed that the Philippines lay on the Portuguese side of the Tordesillas Line and that, therefore, an expedition thither was politically provocative. 30

A Map of the Discoveries made by Captn. Willm. Dampier in the Roebuck in 1699 by Emanuel Bowen, 1704 (image courtesy of Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc.) (20) Letter of Andreas Corsali, National Library of Australia; cf. nla.gov.au/nla.obj-234719683: “This manuscript is a contemporary copy of Lettera di Andrea Corsali allo Illustrissimo Signore Duca Juliano de Medici, Venuta Dellindia del mese di Octobre Nel M.D. XVI. It was prepared for Andrea Gritti, Doge of Venice from 1523.” (21) Jodocus Hondius’s version of Gerard Mercator’s long-running map America sive India Nova used the term in 1630. (22) One might note that Hernando Grijalva and other European cartographers of the 16th & 17th centuries included an ‘I. dos Crespos’ (island of the frizzy-haired) off the north coast of New Guinea, and several islands in the wider region indicating ‘bearded’ people, including one named Barbas off what is now Negros Island, shown by Giacomo Gastaldi in his map Terza Parte Dell'Asia (c1561). There is also an ’isle of white men’. (23) John Harris, Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca, or, A compleat Collection of Voyages and Travels, Thomas Bennet et al., London, 1705, vol. I, pp.41-43. (24) William Dampier, A Voyage to New Holland, &c. In the Year, 1699, James Knapton, London, 1703, pp. 100 & 148 respectively; author’s italics. (25) Thomas Forrest, A Voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas [from Balambangan … During the Years 1774, 1775, and 1776], J. Robson et al., London, 1779, reprinted with an introduction by D.K. Bassett, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1969, pp. 48, 23, 42 & 68 respectively. (26) Antoine de Winter (1696) and Matthäus Seutter (1730) are among those who place the word ‘Paiene’ (pagan / heathen) in southeastern Gilolo. Nicolæs Visscher (1670) names a small island off the southwest coast of New Guinea ‘Os Papouas’ while René Auguste Constantin de Renneville (1725) gives the name ‘Papos’ to a small island just off the north coast of the Bird’s Head Peninsula. Several other maps show an island in the Moluccan Sea as ‘Popo’. (27) One map by Nicolas de Fer (1702) offers the reader three choices for he adds to ‘Nouvelle Guinée’ and ‘Terres de Papous’ a third name: ‘Nouvelle Zellande’. (28) On the use of ‘Papua’ during this later period, particularly by Australia, my unpublished paper “Euphonious Papua” is available on request. (29) Pigafetta op cit, p. 63. (30) Pigafetta op cit, p. 146. 31

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