FIG-summaries
Ondanks de coronacrisis ging veel in ons
land digitaal door, maar zo niet de geplande
FIG Working Week, ook de lezingen niet.
(Begrijpelijker is dat er voor de zo royaal,
bijv. in Geo-Info 2020-1, aangekondigde
technische tours geen digitaal alternatief
was.) Ook de geplande Historical Afternoon
ging zonder digitaal alternatief niet door.
Van enkele niet-Nederlandse bijdragen vroe
gen we om de summaries te mogen over
nemen. In of eigenlijk via Zuid-Afrika lukte
het zelfs om daarbij een kaart te krijgen!
Redactie DHC
Dutch Discoveries Across the Water: the
First Real Maps of New Holland from
1606!
John Brock, Australia
(JohnB@candasurveyors.com.au)
The early seafarers expected to sail off the
edge of the world if they ventured too far
south or be gobbled up by unspeakable sea
monsters which were imagined to ply the
south seas in wait for hapless sailors. How
ever the ancient mariners and earliest carto
graphers also dreamed of a Great South
Land full of riches and beautiful damsels
thriving amongst a lush environment sur
rounded by exotic flora and fauna fuelling
the visions of the expectant sponsors of a
flood of southern explorations, some indeed
coming to disastrous ends while others met
with disappointment and disillusionment.
When the Dutch East India Company was
formed in 1602 in Amsterdam it quickly
dispatched much of its vast fleet of vessels
southward in search of riches and discovery.
Establishing its southern base in Batavia
(modern day Jakarta in Indonesia) the Great
South Land beckoned just a gentle breeze
away awaiting revelations for the Dutch
mariners so the first reliable charting of New
Holland began in 1606 with Willem Jansz
mapping about 120 kilometres of the west
ern side of Cape York filing his work away
as an extension of Papua New Guinea until it
was discovered hundreds of years later to
actually be part of Australia!
From this point onwards right up until the last
years of the 17th Century the Dutch fascination
with investigating this vast southern giant
continent carried on in earnest with many ships
coming to an unsavoury demise on the west
coast after over-shooting the easterly passage to
crash into the dangerous reefs all along the
lengthy western coastline, such as the ill-fated
Batavia, and numerous other craft meeting
their doom in the treacherous waters. However
there were some fruitful expeditions by Dirk
Hartog (1616), Abel Tasman (1642-44) and
various other adventurers from The Nether
lands who charted extensive stretches of the
Australian southern, western and northern
limits, but none of them reported back
favourably such that any proposed settlement of
the south
Historical Surveying Talk on The Dutch at
the Cape of Good Hope: Land Rights and
Mapping
Jenny Whittal (South Africa)
When the Dutch arrived at the Cape of Good
Hope to establish a refreshment station, they
brought with them, and imposed, the dominant
views of land rights under international law of
the time. But this international law was a Euro
pean compact and did not consider the rights
of indigenous peoples. Land acquisition at the
Cape under Dutch rule, and the legality of that
in terms of their international law is discussed.
Along with land governance came the respon
sibility of surveying land parcels for allocation
to Dutch immigrants as well as mapping of the
territory acquired. This presentation thus
touches on the law, the practice, the property
surveying and the maps during Dutch rule at
the Cape between 1652 and the start of the
19th century.
('I intend to publish the paper in an ISI-rated
journal at some point later on', zo mailde ze
DHC.)
94
2020-2 De Hollandse Cirkel
