Beschreibung:

70/2273 Maps plans and views Groodt Timoor 70/2273 [Maps, plans and views]. "Groodt Timoor". MANUSCRIPT MAP, pen and brown ink and watercolour, 18th cent. w. 19th cent. annots. (in pen and ink and pencil) added in 2 diff. French hands, on 2 full and 2 half sheets of Dutch paper, with the watermark of J. Honig & Zoon (used from the early 1760s), 90x58 cm., w. compass rose and scale bar ("Duijtsche Mijlen 15 op een Graat") [approx. 1:450.000] in lower part. - Some vague foxing and a few sm. brown specks; lower margin sl. mouldy; professionally backed w. Japanese paper, resolving most of the following defects: split on horizontal middle fold, a few tears (occas. w. trifle loss of image / text), a few portions missing from blank margins. On the whole a remarkably well-preserved map. = Background. In 1756 the senior merchant and shabandar of Batavia JOHAN ANDREAS PARAVICINI (1710-1771), a Swiss nobleman in service of the Dutch East India Co. was sent as high commissioner to Timor, in order to renew treaties with the 48 local rulers. As the settlement was run at a yearly defecit, ever since the early 18th century a discussion had been started to either leave Timor altogether or make it more profitable or politically useful. The island of Timor, divided between Portuguese (North and East) and Dutch (South and West) hemispheres and known for products such as sandalwood, bees wax and tortoise shell, was gradually becoming less profitable, as these products became less available due to exhaustion. With the expedition of Paravicini in 1756 a mapmaker was embarked to survey the island. Although this mapmaker lost his life when his ship (De Loper) perished in a storm on the Timor shore, some inventory and partly completed maps were saved from the sea. Another mapmaker was sent from Batavia to complete the work and he remained on the island when Paravcini left Timor during the summer of 1756. After the mapmaker returned to headquarters, it is understood that he presented 2 maps to Paravicini and in the Batavia resolutions of 12 July 1759 it says that it was decided to send the best one to The Netherlands (this map not present in the Dutch National Archive). The map herewith presented is presumably the other one, kept by Paravicini who took it, together with two famous drawings showing the ceremonies at Coupang of the signing of the treaties (both in the possession of the Library of Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam) to Europe after he repatriated in 1759. Once in Europe Paravicini had no immediate permanent adress, and he travelled around in various countries, but mostly in Poland and Austria, with his English wife since 1766, while his luggage and papers were stored in 6 large trunks in Venice and later Marseille. When in 1771 Paravicini suddenly died in France, his nephew, colonel Johan David Paravicini ( 1718-1781), a military engineer from Maastricht, came to Paris to liquidate the extensive estate of which he was one of the heirs, as Paravicini had no legitimate children nor did he leave a will. The colonel ordered the luggage to be sent to the Dutch Embassy in Paris where it was received by the attachee Theo Loose. Loose confirmed the contents, among which a large number of Timor and Batavia related documents. He promised to send these to Johan David Paravicini in Maastricht, in a letter dated 3rd of April 1773, "I will send these all to you and it will present you a couple of years of amusement to read it all". After the colonel died in 1781, the valuable parts of the collection, that now belonged to the colonel and his wife Rosina Charlotta Pusch, were sold over time on the open market. The map contains a large amount of toponymic, historical and agricultural as well as political details, linking it to the situation in the year 1757, the year after the new treaty came in use. The boundary between Portuguese and Dutch territory is marked in two positions. Many details of fortifications are drawn with the politicial allegiance of