29,5 x 20cm, copper plate, hand-coloured, maps printed on verso, London, 1709

Made by Herman Moll.

This map is boarded by three seas; the Ethiopian Sea, the Sea of the Cafres, and the Indian Sea. The map depicts the Southern tip of Africa, and Madagascar separated by the Mocambique Channel.

Not all that much is known about the cartographer Herman Moll. Moll's work quickly helped him become a member of a group which congregated at Jonathan's Coffee House at Number 20 Exchange Alley, Cornhill, where speculators met to trade stock. Moll's circle included the scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the authors Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and the intellectually-gifted pirates William Dampier, Woodes Rogers and William Hacke. From these contacts, Moll gained a great deal of privileged information that was included in his maps. Moll had an antipathy to French geographers and to De l'Isle in particular. This bias caused him to ignore the excellent map of De l'Isle which has been in circulation for several years, and to base his map of Africa on old Dutch models. He even retained names from Mercator's map of 1595, with the result that he produced, geographically speaking, a very indifferent map.

Tooley, pg 83

AFRICA, Congo. Angola. Cafres. Monoemugi. Monomotapa. Zanguebar & Madagascar.

: Moll (H.)

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