A sixteenth century Portuguese report concerning an early Javanese world map

Abstract

In the sixteenth century, there were numerous voyages of discovery in the oceans of the world, expanding European understanding and influence. These explorations, and in particular the knowledge they created, have tended to overshadow other ventures into the unknown. Not just the Europeans, but other cultures as well, navigated the seas and accumulated geographical information, putting together their own ideas about the distribution of the lands and seas around the globe. Arab and Asian seafarers plied the oceans in trade and exploration, and created maps and geographical texts. These maps and texts, however, are not as numerous as a scholar might wish. The Asian maps, particularly early ones, are few in number, and these are virtually all Chinese and Korean creations, world maps based on traditional religious concepts of a circular landmass. There are few maps based on actual navigation. But an early sixteenth-century Portuguese document gives a brief description of a Javanese map, which apparently showed much of the world. It also depicted the routes of the navigations of the Chinese and other Pacific peoples. The map itself has been lost, but we read of it in a letter from the Portuguese admiral Afonso de Albuquerque to his king, Dom Manuel, dated 1 April 1512.