Karte von der Inselwelt Polynesien oder dem Fünften Welttheile

Title

Karte von der Inselwelt Polynesien oder dem Fünften Welttheile

Description

Map of Oceania with Australia, New Zeeland and all its islands.

ca. 1780

Artist

Reilly (1766-1820)

Franz Johann Joseph von Reilly (1766 - 1820) Vienna. Franz Johann Joseph von Reilly was an Austrian publisher, cartographer and writer. He was born the son of the court master Johann Reilly. He initially worked in the civil service, but then devoted himself exclusively to geography. From 1789 to 1806, he produced the atlas Schauplatz der fünf Theile der Welt, which only covers Europe on its 830 sheets. After the Schul Atlas (1791-92) and the Allgemeine Erdbeschreibung (3 volumes, 1792-93), he published the first (complete) Austrian world atlas entitled Grosser deutscher Atlas from 1794 to 1796. In 1796, he produced the series Geschichtliche und bildliche Vorstellung der Regimenter des Erzhauses Oesterreich (Historical and Pictorial Presentation of the Regiments of the Archduke of Austria), and in 1799 the Allgemeine Post Atlas von der ganzen Welt (General Postal Atlas of the Whole World) - the first atlas of its kind in the world.

Historical Description

The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's oceanic divisions. Though the peoples of Asia and Oceania have traveled the Pacific Ocean since prehistoric times, the eastern Pacific was first sighted by Europeans in the early 16th century when Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and discovered the great "southern sea" which he named Mar del Sur (in Spanish). In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands that would eventually result in the first world circumnavigation. Magellan called the ocean Pacífico (or "Pacific" meaning, "peaceful") because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century.