Henri Abraham Chatelain is renowned for his contributions to cartography and historical documentation in the early 18th century. His Atlas historique, first published between 1705 and 1720, is his most significant work. This ambitious multi-volume atlas is an encyclopedic collection that combines maps, geographical information, and historical narratives, providing a comprehensive overview of the world as it was understood at the time.
Chatelain's Atlas historique is particularly celebrated for its detailed and artistic engravings, which include a wide array of maps, city views, genealogical tables, and illustrations depicting various cultural and historical scenes. The atlas covers a vast range of subjects, from geography and history to ethnography and natural history, making it a valuable resource for scholars and collectors alike.
Here volumes 5-6 are first editions from 1719 as per Koeman, while volumes 1-4 are new editions from 1718. The first four volumes cover Europe, with volume 3 being the second section of volume 2, and include newly added folding maps of the world and continents. Volumes 5-6 are dedicated to Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Volume 6's large map of America, printed from four plates, spans from the Pacific to Australia and Japan, and from the Atlantic to Africa and Western Europe. This map is celebrated as one of the most beautiful depictions of America, richly adorned with views, fishery and mining scenes, customs of native peoples in Canada and Mexico, and portraits of explorers with their routes.
The plates showcase views of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Krakow, Macau, Smyrna, Stockholm, Venice, a plan of Rome, small maps, portraits, genealogical trees, animals, costumes, historical and folk scenes, and coats of arms, each accompanied by detailed texts.
Henri Abraham Chatelain (1684-1743) was a Huguenot pastor of Parisian origins. Chatelain proved a successful businessman, creating lucrative networks in London, The Hague, and then Amsterdam. He is most well known for the Atlas Historique, published in seven volumes between 1705 and 1720. This encyclopedic work was devoted to the history and genealogy of the continents, discussing such topics as geography, cosmography, topography, heraldry, and ethnography. Published thanks to a partnership between Henri, his father, Zacharie, and his younger brother, also Zacharie, the text was contributed to by Nicolas Gueudeville, a French geographer. The maps were by Henri, largely after the work of Guillaume Delisle, and they offered the general reader a window into the emerging world of the eighteenth century.