Nicolaas Witsen explains his new map of Great Tartary to the Royal Society
A 1686 exchange of letters in the Philosophical Transactions in which the Amsterdam burgomaster Witsen tells how he gathered the information for his map of 'Great Tartary'.
Full title An Account of a New Map of Tartary
N. Witsen; Philosophical Transactions correspondent
This short notice in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions (1686) prints two letters. Sir Robert Southwell, President of the Society, thanks Nicolaas Witsen for copies of his new map of Tartary and asks how it could possibly have been made. Witsen, then a leading burgomaster of Amsterdam, answers that he travelled to Muscovy about 28 years earlier, talked there with 'Tartars of all sorts', and has since kept up correspondence with Moscow, Astrakhan, Isfahan, Constantinople and even Peking, collecting journals and commissioned drawings. He also admits his doubts about the coastlines. It contains no description of Tartar life itself.
How they knew
Part eyewitness
Who “Tartar” means here
'Tartary' here is the whole vast, little-known interior of northern and central Asia between Muscovy and China; 'Tartars of all sorts' are the many Asian peoples Witsen met in Muscovy.
Why read it
It shows exactly how a famous seventeenth century map of 'Great Tartary' was built: from interviews, letters, travellers' journals and drawings, not from a surveyed empire, and with the mapmaker openly flagging what he was unsure of.
Watch out
A four-page notice, not Witsen's map or his great book Noord en Oost Tartarye. The letters are printed in English in the journal; Witsen's is summarised 'to the effect following'.
Editorial contextWitsen answers that the map grew out of a visit almost 28 years earlier to the country of the Tsar, where he talked with local people and 'Tartars of all sorts'. Since then he had kept up letters with Moscow, Astrakhan, Georgia, Isfahan, Poland, Constantinople and Peking, and collected journals and drawings made to his order. He then admits his biggest doubts are about the sea coasts, which he drew in pale colour to show the uncertainty.
I not only Conversed with the Inhabitants of those Countreys, but with Tartars of all sorts … I have maintain'd a constant Correspondence in Mosco, Astracan, Georgia, Ispahan, Polonia, and Constantinople, I have had Letters every year from Peking the chief City of China, I have gathered Volumes of Journals and Registers
Nicolaas Witsen (letter printed in Philosophical Transactions, 1686)
Editorial contextThe Royal Society's president greets Witsen's map as a Columbus-like discovery of a new world, and wonders aloud how anyone could chart deserts, bogs and mountains that seemed made for 'everlasting Solitude'. It is a vivid picture of how unknown 'Tartary' was to western Europe in the 1680s.
I Have lately had a great Effect of your Bounty in the Maps of Tartary. this is Columbus like, the Discovery of a New World; at least Tydings of those Parts, which from the beginning have layn in the Dark.
Sir Robert Southwell, President of the Royal Society, writing to Witsen