A. newe. Mape of Poland Done into English by I. Speede

Title

A. newe. Mape of Poland Done into English by I. Speede

Description

A wonderful map of Poland. From Speed's 'Prospect Of The Most Famous Parts Of The World'. Includes birds-eye views of Cracow, Dantzick, Posna, Crossen, Sandomiria and Breslaw across the top and indigenous costumes of a Polonian Gentleman and Gentlewoman Polonian Man and Woman, 2 coats of arms, a Silesian Woman and Bride and Dantsick Maid and Bride on the sides.

ca. 1640

Artist

Speed (1552-1629)

John Speed was an English cartographer and historian. He is known as England's most famous Stuart period mapmaker. It was with the encouragement of William Camden that Speed began his Historie of Great Britaine, which was published in 1611. Although he probably had access to historical sources that are now lost to us, his work as a historian is considered mediocre and secondary in importance to his map-making, of which his most important contribution is probably his town plans, many of which provide the first visual record of the British towns they depict. Much of the engraving was done in Amsterdam at the workshop of Jodocus Hondius. His maps of English counties are often found framed in homes throughout the United Kingdom.

Historical Description

Poland is bordered by the Baltic Sea, Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast and Lithuania to the north, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and Czech Republic, to the south, and Germany to the west. The establishment of the Polish state can be traced back to AD 966, when Mieszko I ruler of the realm coextensive with the territory of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented its longstanding political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest at the end of the 18th century. Poland regained its independence in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles. It was one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th-century Europe, with a uniquely liberal political system, which adopted Europe's first written national constitution, the Constitution of 3 May 1791.