Plan de la Ville de Santiago, Capitale du Chili

Plan of Chile's capital Santiago with key buildings and locations labelled. North is oriented to the right of the map.

Jacques-Nicolas Bellin was
one of the greatest 18th century map makers. He specialised in hydrography and
was appointed to the French Hydrographic office at the young age of 18 in 1721.
Twenty years later he was named the first “Ingenieur de la Marine” for the
“Depot des Cartes et Plans de la Marine” as well as Hydrographer to Louis XV of
France. Over a fifty year career, he published a multitude of important maps
often from first hand sources provided by naval officers, merchants and
government sources. His level of access was extraordinary. As well as
publishing his own atlases, he was a contributor to many seminal French works
on exploration, including Abbee Raynal’s “Histoire des Deux Indes”, Abbee
Prevost’s “Histoire Generale des Voyages” and Pierre de Charlevoix’s “Histoire
et Description Generale de la Nouvelle France”.

In 1762, Bellin
decided to publish one of his most popular and accessible works: “Le Petit
Atlas Maritime”. The work came out in 1764 in five volumes and proved extremely
popular. Many of the maps were reduced versions which Bellin had either
contributed or published previously. The five volumes usually contain between
575 and 590 maps with variations noted between individual examples. As the
preparation took only two years, it is very likely that Bellin had a majority
of these copper plates already available. The initial financial support for the
atlas was from Etienne-Francois, Duc de Choiseul, a highly placed French
politician who was credited for strengthening both the army and navy. Due to
its accessibility, he perceived the ”Petit Atlas Maritime” as a method of
publicising both the work of the “Depot de la Marine” and the Navy to the
general public. Bellin includes a long dedication to Choiseul on the front of
each volume.



For collectors today, the work presents one of the widest selections of
extremely desirable smaller maps. They provide clear, concise and attractive
geographical records of some of the most inaccessible and exotic areas of the
world in the mid-18th century. Bellin was part of a group called “Les
Philosophes”, the French counterpart to the pioneers of the English Age of
Reason and his maps are a lasting legacy from the Age of French Enlightenment.

This scarce and early plan of Santiago, the capital of Chile, was first issued in the Histoire des Voyages on a different orientation in about 1756, showing north to the bottom of the page. It was then slightly reduced and issued in the Petite Atlas Maritime on a different orientation, showing north to the right edge.

As was often the case, the source for the plan was the map issued by Amadee Frezier, the French soldier-scientist who clandestinely surveyed Spanish activity and fortifications in Chile and Peru while ostensibly being on a scientific expedition in the early 18th century. Frezier's map shows the north pointing to the bottom of the map.

Original colour. [SAM3539]