Jacques-Nicolas Bellin
Jacques Nicolas Bellin (1703 – 21 March 1772) was a French
Bellin was born in Paris. He was hydrographer of France's
First Ingenieur de la Marine
In 1721, at age 18, he was appointed hydrographer (chief cartographer) to the French Navy. In August 1741, he became the first Ingénieur de la Marine of the Dépot des cartes et plans de la Marine (the French Hydrographical Office) and was named Official Hydrographer of the French King.
Prodigious work, high standard of excellence
During his reign the Depot published a prodigious number of charts and maps, among which were large folio-format sea-charts of France, the Neptune Francois. He also produced a number of sea-atlases of the world, e.g., the Atlas Maritime and the Hydrographie Francaise. These gained fame, distinction and respect all over Europe and were republished throughout the 18th and even in the succeeding century.
Bellin also created smaller format maps such as the 1764 Petit Atlas Maritime (5 vols.) containing 580 finely detailed charts.
Bellin set a very high standard of workmanship and accuracy thus gaining for France a leading role in European cartography and geography. Many of his maps were copied by other mapmakers of Europe.
Member of philosophes
He was one of the Encyclopédistes, a group of 18th century intellectuals in France who compiled the 35-volume Encyclopédie which was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Bellin contributed 994 articles.
The Encyclopédistes, were part of the group called philosophes among whose members were the great minds of the
Innocent party to a geographical error
Bellin contributed a number of maps to 15-vol.
Unlike many other European mapmakers of the time who outright appropriated Murillo's map, Bellin had the intellectual integrity to fully credit Murillo as his source, an open acknowledgement shown in the title cartouche of Bellin's map which came out the same year as the original work by Murillo.
Shown in Bellin's map was an island named "
Combés disregarded de Herrera's version and adopted Ramusio's. He wrote that Magellan's fleet had anchored at Butuan and from there sailed for Cebu making a stop at a way station he named Limasaua.
Five years earlier than Combés, Fr. Francisco Colín wrote the Armada moored at Butuan from March–April 1521 where Magellan and his men together with the natives celebrated an Easter Sunday mass on 31 March 1521. From Butuan the fleet sailed for Cebu making a brief stop at a way station he called "Dimasaua", an invented word meaning "this is not the Mazagua of Antonio de Herrera where supposedly an Easter Sunday mass was held which I already said happened in Butuan."[citation needed]
This episode was projected in the 1734 map made by Murillo who used Combés name, "Limassava" not "Dimasaua" which map Bellin copied.
Gatighan becomes Limasava
In 1789, Augustinian
Largely with the appearance of the eyewitness account of Ginés de Mafra, the only seaman in Magellan's fleet to return to Mazaua, whose testimony reveals a concrete, measurable description of Mazaua, the skein starting from the garbled version of Pigafetta by Ramusio to the mishandling by Combés to Bellin and finally to Amoretti has been unraveled: Pigafetta's Gatighan is Bellin's Limasava.[citation needed]
Published works
Published during his lifetime were:
- Hydrographie française (1753)
- Carte de l'Amérique septentrionale (Map of Northern America) (1755)
- Le petit Atlas François. Recueil de Cartes et Plans des quatre parties du Monde (1758)
- Petit Atlas Maritime (1764)
- Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre la géographie (1769)
- Description géographique du golfe de Venise et de la Morée (1771)
See also
References
- Library and Archives Canada – The Mapmakers: an essay in four parts (French)
- E. Taillemite. Dictionnaire des marins français. Paris, 1982.
- Jean-Marc Garant. Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703–1722), cartographe, hydrographe, ingénieur du ministère de la Marine: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa valeur historique. Thèse (M.A., Histoire), Montréal: 1973
- Combés, Francisco. 1667. Historia de las islas de Mindanao, Iolo y sus adyacentes. W.E. Retana (ed.). Madrid 1897.
- de Jesus, Vicente C. (2002). Mazaua Historiography[dead link]. Retrieved 27 February 2007, from MagellansPortMazaua mailing list, E. Taillemite. Dictionnaire des marins francais. Paris, 1982.
- Herrera, Antonio de. 1601. Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierrafirme del mar oceano, t. VI. Angel Gonzalez Palencia (ed.). Madrid 1947.
- Ramusio, Gian Battista. "La Detta navigatione per messer Antonio Pigafetta Vicentino". In: Delle navigatione... Venice: pp. 380–98.
External links
- See a 1754 map by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, Karte von der Erdenge Panama und den Provinzen Veragua, Terra Firma und Darien / zur allgemeinen Historie der Reisen, von dem Hrn Bellin ; Ing. de la Marine., hosted by the Portal to Texas History.
- "Map of the Coast of Arabia, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf" by Bellin that dates to 1740