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Description

Drawn by Johann Christoph Matthias Reinecke for the celebrated Industrie-Comptoir of Weimar, this is the September 1803 revision of his General Chart of Australia and the western Pacific. It offers one of the earliest appearances of the continental name Australien in print, predating Flinders’s public advocacy of the term by several months. Reinecke signals his reliance on the “newest voyages of discovery and astronomical determinations,” and his compilation delivers precisely that, weaving together the coastal surveys of Cook, La Pérouse, Vancouver, Bass, and Flinders with the Dutch legacy of Tasman, Vlamingh, and de Vlamingh.

The outline of Neu Holland is brought almost to its modern form. Bass Strait is cleanly shown, separating Van Diemens Land from the mainland, a detail confirmed only five years earlier by Bass and Flinders. On the north-west coast, Reinecke retains Dutch toponyms such as Willem’s River and Endracht Land, yet he threads them into a continuous shoreline that reflects the growing British presence. The eastern seaboard is labelled Süd-Wallis oder die engl[ische] Statthalterschaft Sydney-Cove, acknowledging the young penal colony while recalling Captain Cook’s original New South Wales. Across the continent, the curious epithet “vormals [formally] Ulimaroa” reminds us of Daniel Djurberg’s fleeting Swedish coinage, already passing out of scholarly use by 1803.

Reinecke extends his canvas far beyond Australia. The plate sweeps north to Canton and the Yellow Sea, eastward through Micronesia and the newly charted Neuen Hebriden, and south to the twin islands of New Zealand, whose coasts bear the placenames supplied by Cook’s three voyages. The Hawaiian group, renamed the Sandwich’s Inseln, anchors the north-eastern corner, underscoring the maritime highway that connected Britain’s Australasian outpost with its North American and Asian interests.

Printed in Weimar, then a focal point of German intellectual life, the map embodies the Industrie-Comptoir’s mission to disseminate the latest scientific and geographical knowledge in accessible form. It would have served scholars and informed readers across the German-speaking world, situating antipodean exploration within a global web of trade, science and imperial rivalry. As a synthesis of information available on the very eve of Flinders’s return and Baudin’s posthumous publication, the 1803 Reinecke stands at a pivotal moment, capturing Europe’s rapidly evolving understanding of the Pacific and presenting the lands south of the equator under a name that soon became universal.

Condition Description
Original hand-color. Engraving on 19th-century paper. Foxing.
Reference
cf. Tooley 999 and 1001.
Iohann Matthias Christoph Reinecke Biography

Johann Christoph Matthias Reinecke (1768-1818) was a German scientist. He worked in a variety of fields, most notably cartography and paleontology. A true polymath, he spoke eight languages and also wrote poems and songs. He produced a variety of maps in his career, including a series for the Geographical Institute in Weimar.