Carte de l ´Espagne

Title

Carte de l ´Espagne

Description

Map shows the Iberian Peninsula with Spain, Portugal, the Balearic Islands, partly North Africa and a title cartouche with mileage indicator.

dated 1789

Artist

Dezauche (1780-1838)

Jean-Claude Dezauche (1780-1838) was the successor to Guillaume De L'Isle and Philipe Buache. Guillaume De L´Isle (1675- 1726) Paris, was a French cartographer known for his popular and accurate maps of Europe and the newly explored Americas and Africa. De L´Isle was admitted into the French Académie Royale des Sciences, an institution financed by the French state. After that date, he signed his maps with the title of “Géographe de l’Académie”. Five years later, he moved to the Quai de l’Horloge in Paris, a true publishing hub where his business prospered. De L´Isle’s ascension through the ranks culminated in 1718 when he received the title of Premier Géographe du Roi. His new office consisted in teaching geography to the Dauphin, King Louis XIV’s son, a task for which he received a salary. De L´Isle’s reputation as a man of science probably helped .This supports the claim of the historian Mary Sponberg Pedley, who says “once authority was established, a geographer’s name might retain enough value to support two or three generations of mapmakers”. In De L´Isle’s case, it could be said that his accomplishments surpassed his father’s. Up to that point, he had drawn maps not only of European countries, such as Italy, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, Poland, and regions such as the Duchy of Burgundy, but he had also contributed to the empire’s claims to recently explored continents of Africa and the Americas. Like many cartographers of these days, De L´Isle did not travel with the explorers and elaborated the maps mostly in his office. The quality of his maps depended on a solid network that would provide him first-hand information. Given the family’s reputation and his own, De L´Isle had access to fairly recent accounts of travellers who were coming back from the New World, which gave him an advantage over his competitors. Being a member of the Académie, he was also aware of recent discoveries, especially in astronomy and measurement. When he could not confirm the accuracy of his source, he would indicate it clearly on his maps. For instance, his Carte de la Louisiane shows a river that the baron of Lahontan claimed he discovered, but no one else could validate it, so De L`lsle warned the viewer that its actual existence was in doubt. De L´Isle 's search for exactitude and intellectual honesty entangled him in a legal dispute in 1700 with Jean-Baptiste Nolin, a fellow cartographer. Noticing Nolin had used details that were considered original from his Map of the World, De L´isle dragged Nolin in court to prove his plagiarism. In the end, Delisle managed to convince the jury of scientists that Nolin only knew the old methods of cartography and therefore that he had stolen the information from his manuscript. Nolin's maps were confiscated and he was forced to pay the court costs.The scientificity of the work produced by the De L´Isle family contrasted with the workshop of Sanson. While Sanson knowingly published outdated facts and mistakes, De L´Isle strived to present up-to-date knowledge.

Historical Description

In prehistoric and prehistoric times, Iberians, Celts and Basques settled on the Iberian peninsula named after the former. In the 11th century BC The Phoenicians settled on the south coast; the most famous of their colonies was Cadiz. The name Spain is derived from the Roman name Hispania (from Phoenician ishapan "land of the rock hyrax". In the early 8th century, the Moors destroyed the Visigoth Empire and conquered the entire Iberian Peninsula. Their centuries of rule shaped the country. The Arabic heritage was reflected in both the architecture and the language. However, the Moors were unable to establish themselves permanently in the northern outskirts of the peninsula. From there the "Reconquest" (Reconquista) started. In this process, which spanned several centuries (722–1492) and was not continuous, the Muslim empires were gradually pushed back by the Christian empires until the fall of Granada in 1492, the last Moorish state structure on the peninsula also disappeared. In the 15th century, the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united. Aragon was an important maritime power in the Mediterranean at that time. The Spanish colonial empire extended around 1600 across large parts of South and Central America, the southern part of today's USA and the Philippines. As the English and French also intensified their colonial efforts, Spain gradually lost its supremacy. The liberation wars of the American states, particularly the Mexican and South American wars of independence in the early 19th century, brought independence to most of the colonies. In 1898, the last major properties were lost to the United States during the Spanish-American War, which meant the end of the colonial empire. The African colonies that followed later (Spanish-Morocco, Spanish-Sahara and Equatorial Guinea) finally became independent in the 20th century.