Asia Divisa in Imperia, Regna & Status in que distribuitur, ad usum serenissimi Burgundiae Ducis,…

Title

Asia Divisa in Imperia, Regna & Status in que distribuitur, ad usum serenissimi Burgundiae Ducis,…

Description

Decorartive map with two cartouches of total Asia with Southeast Asia.

ca. 1694

Artist

Jaillot (1632-1712)

Alexis Hubert Jaillot (1632-1712) was an important French cartographer and publisher. In 1665 Jaillot married into the Berey family of map publishers. After the death of his brother-in-law Nicolas II Berey (1640–1667) he bought the Berey card collection from his sister-in-law. This gave him a valuable foundation that he could market straight away without ever having made a map himself. Jaillot entered the card business at an opportune moment. In early 1668, Louis XIV won the first of his Reunion Wars, and a period began when France was constantly expanding its territory. There was a great demand for maps depicting the French triumphs and the new frontiers, as well as upcoming expansion plans. Jaillot's map collection also included printing plates that Pierre Duval (1619–1683) (nephew of Nicolas Sanson) had created and originally sold to Nicolas Berey. But Duval, who also mislaid his cards himself, resisted the re-edition of his old cards. At the height of the dispute with Duval, Jaillot won Nicolas Sanson's sons Guillaume and Adrien in late 1670 as card makers and business partners. With them he was able to market new cards with the prestigious name Sansons. His first atlas of 1681, Atlas Nouveau, became such a great commercial success that other publishers began selling plagiarism.

Historical Description

Asia is Earth's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the Eastern and Northern Hemispheres. The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, linked by the interior mass of the Central Asian steppes. The coastal periphery was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands. The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from the steppes. The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans, who spread their languages into the Middle East, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia, was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra. These areas remained very sparsely populated. The center and the peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However, the lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force; for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies.