Title:
Carte des Indes Orientales dessinée suivant les Observations les plus recentes, dont le principal est tirée des Cartes hydrographiques de Mr. d’Après de Mannevillette. Dediée tres humblement à son Altesse Serenissime le Prine Guillaume Charles Henry Friso Souverain Prince d’Orange Pr. de S. E. de Nassau Stadhoudre hereditaire, Admiral & Chevalier de l’Ordre de Iarretiere par son tres humbles & tres soumis serviteurd l’Auteur & les Heritiers de Homan l’An 1748. 

Attractive and large map (2 sheets) of South East Asia by Johann Tobias Mayer for the Homann Heirs in 1748. On left sheet it shows India as far north as Delhi, across to Assam, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Sumatra. Also Maldives and Ceylon. The right sheet covers eastern China, and Formosa, the Philippines, Borneo, Java, the Celebes, the Moluccas, Timor, Papua New Guinea, and the very tip of northern Australia.

Cartographically this map is derived from the work of the French cartographer and navigator Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas-Denis d’Après de Mannevillette (1707 – 1780). Mannevillette spent several years in the far east producing numerous surveys and updating older maps. His maritime atlas, the Neptune Oriental offered a wealth of new cartographic and maritime information in relation to the far east. It was published in 1745 and influenced numerous subsequent maps, as in the present 1748 example by Tobias Mayer and Homann Heirs.

The title cartouche at the bottom left hand dedicates the map to Wilhelm Carl Heinrich Friso, Prince of Orange and Nassau.
Rhumb lines, two alternative titles at the top and four mileage scales complete the map.

The titles read: ” Carte des Indes Orientales. I. Feuille dans la quelle on represente les Indes deca la Riviere de Ganges, le Golfe de Bengale, Siam, Malacca, Sumatra. & Carte des Indes Orientales.II. Feuille, qui comprend les isles de Sonde, l’archipel des Philippines, & les isles Moluques. dresseé par Mr. Tobie Mayer de la Societé Geograph.”

About the Cartographer
Johann Baptist Homann (1664-1724) was a leading German geographer and cartographer who founded in 1702 his own publishing house. Homann produced hundreds of maps and developed a distinctive style characterized by heavy detailed engraving, elaborate allegorical cartouche work, and vivid hand color. The Homann firm, due to the lower cost of printing in Germany, was able to undercut the dominant French and Dutch publishing houses while matching the diversity and quality of their output. By 1715 Homann’s rising star caught the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the VI, who appointed him Imperial Cartographer. In the same year he was also appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

Following Homann’s death in 1726, the management of the firm passed to his son Johann Christoph Homann (1703-1730). J. C. Homann, perhaps realizing that he would not long survive his father, stipulated in his will that the company would be inherited by his two head managers, Johann Georg Ebersberger and Johann Michael Franz, and that it would publish only under the name Homann Heirs. This designation, in various forms (Homannsche Heirs, Heritiers de Homann, Lat Homannianos Herod, Homannschen Erben, etc..) appears on maps from about 1731 onwards. The firm continued to publish maps in ever diminishing quantities until the death of its last owner, Christoph Franz Fembo in 1848.