The Cartography of an Indies Companies' Man: Two Maps by Jan Nieuhoff.

For twenty-eight years of his life, Jan Nieuhoff (1618-1672), the son of a German middle-class merchant family, served as a field agent across the Dutch Empire for either the Chartered West India Company (WIC) or the United East India Company (VOC). In this capacity, he was an active participant in the expansion and transformation of Dutch and global capitalism at the dawn of a new era of Western imperialism. While working for the WIC, he took part in the failed Dutch Brazil enterprise, trading not only in sugar, indigo, tobacco, enslaved people, cocoa, pineapple, and dyewood but also exploring the interior. As a VOC representative, he served in the East Indies, China, and India, dealing in pepper, cloves, cinnamon, opium, ginger, coconuts, enslaved peoples, cotton, pearls and gemstones, while also investigating some of the more remote islands of the East Indies. Ultimately, he vanished without a trace in Madagascar during his third voyage to the East Indies. Nieuhoffs most notable maps, Brasilia and China, exemplify the work of a Dutch Indies company agent. They reflect not only the key theatres of his work for the companies but also the extent of contemporary geographical knowledge. Both maps were state-of-the-art for their time, incorporating existing cartographic sources while adding firsthand perspectives. Upon publication, they gained immediate international recognition. While the China map is likely the more significant of the two, both serve as fine exemplars of the later classical age of Dutch cartography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]