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Rare Study of Russian Boundaries
Russia/ Northern Asia/ Map Projection.
HASE, Johann Matthias [Nuremberg, 1739]
Karte von dem Rußischen reich und der grossen so wohl aus kleinen Crimischen Tatarey; nebst dem entwurff einer erklärung darüber abgefasset.
Fol. [35.5 x 21.5 cm]
(1) ff. title, (21) ff. including color-coded legend on final leaf, (1) folding hand-colored engraved map of Russia and the Crimea. Extra-illustrated with a two sheet engraved broadsheet giving a catalogue of the Homann firm’s atlases and maps. Bound in contemporary quarter- and corner-calf with speckled paper over boards. Covers chipped and heavily scuffed, light worming, head and foot of spine wanting. Faint soiling to title and some leaves, and light soiling, mostly marginal, to folding map, else excellent.
Rare first edition, second issue (first 1738) of a cartographic appraisal of the shifting boundaries of the Russian and Indo-European subcontinent. Hase’s large folding hand-colored map employs over 30 separate colors to depict national and regional borders throughout the Eurasian landmass, from Scandinavia and the Baltic states in the west to Japan and northeastern Siberia (Kamchatka).
The volume is also notable for its identification of dozens of ethnic minority enclaves east of the Urals. Its color-coded borders identify not only countries such as Mongolia, China and Iran but also several distinct Turkic and Tatar communities as well: Baltic and Crimean Tatars, Uzbeks, Kazhaks, Turkic Karakalpaks, and smaller settlements near the Black and Caspian Seas. The map is prefaced with short, bulleted ethnographic histories—describing, for example, the reach of the medieval Mughal Empire, Russia’s subsequent absorption of the Crimea and parts of northern China, and even the dual political and religious roles of the Dalai Lama.
As Hase explains, the map was designed according to the principles of horizontal stereographic projection—a method that until the 16th century had been chiefly used by astronomers for creating planispheres. Hase had concerned himself with map projections since 1717, as found in his treatise “Sciagraphia methodi projiciendi sphaeras.” Here, in the foreword to the present volume, he argues against using the sinusoidal projection (which severely distorts landmasses near the poles) in favor of the stereographic.
As both a mathematician and historical geographer, “[Hase] practiced cartography as the scientific equal of Delisle and d’Anville . . . he stands with Johann Christoph Gatterer as preeminent in the making of maps for history in eighteenth-century Germany.” (Goffart). The map in the present volume later comprised the final piece to Hase’s hefty geography textbook Imperia Maxima (1743), a color-coded quarto of 28 maps displaying the world’s major empires from antiquity to the modern era.
Not in OCLC, though we have located a copy of this issue at LC (s.v. Hasius); the 1738 is held by Kansas.
NDB VIII.21; Goffart p. 147. |
