The first scientific survey of the southern part of the Korean Peninsula with contemporaneous manuscript additions which are potentially the first European cartographic record of Seoul.

This chart was first issued for the French Admiralty in 1848, with several later issues throughout the 19th century. These included an edition for the Russian Admiralty in 1884 as well as an updated French edition of 1887 which included several islands between Japan and Korea. It acted as a model for all maps of the Peninsula after its first publication.

All editions of the map are rare.

The chart is credited to Ferdinand Jules de la Roche Poncie, an important French Hydrographer and naval officer responsible for several charts of East Asian waters. He employed both earlier and contemporaneous surveys to compile this extraordinary piece focusing on the Korean Peninsula, perceived as the first scientific survey of the area.

This example is the 1859 edition of the map and is potentially a unique example showing manuscript additions present in the region of Seoul. This chart was possibly part of the archive of the punitive expedition commanded by Admiral Roze in 1866. The expedition was launched after the execution of seven French Catholic missionaries in Korea, along with a larger group of Korean Catholic converts. Admiral Roze was given the Frigate Guerriere as well as the corvettes Laplace and Primauquet as part of the expedition; in total there were seven war ships. The flotilla sailed to the western coast of the Peninsula. The most current chart of the region would have been the Depot de la Marine example issued by Poncie. However, these early issues had no information about the navigability of the Han River and particularly Ganghwa Island, the site of a garrison of Korean troops defending the city of Seoul.

The extremely neat and professional annotations on the chart bear all the hall marks of a naval officer making detailed and fresh changes and corrections, adding the mouth of the river, the routes and positions of the ships, correcting a nebulous coastline, and most important of all, marking the position of the city of Seoul, possibly for the first time on a European map. There are signs erasures and corrections, again the hall marks of an officer who was reacting to information provided from new surveys by the escorting ships.

Later editions of the map, particularly the 1887 issue, bear printed coastal detail around the mouth of the Han River and Seoul, although they differ markedly from the manuscript.

These primary changes, together with the erasures, corrections and re-writings are typical of a working manuscript chart, potentially making this a unique survivor from Roze's expedition.

[SEAS5403]