Carte De La Partie Superieure De L‘Inde En De Cadu Gange and Carte de la Partie Inferieure d l‘Inde [Set of 2]
India Divided and Defined: Rigobert Bonne’s Enlightenment Mapping of Upper and Lower India, 1783
a) Carte De La Partie Superieure De L'Inde En De Cadu Gange
1783
Copper engraving on paper
Print size: 8.5 x 12.5 in (21.5 x 32 cm)
Sheet size: 10 x 14.5 in (25 x 36.5 cm)
Folded: 9.75 x 7.5 in (25 x 19.5 cm)
This 1783 map of Upper India, attributed to the celebrated French royal cartographer Rigobert Bonne, represents one of the most disciplined and scientifically informed depictions of northern India produced in the late Enlightenment period. Bonne’s work is well documented as part of the cartographic programme of the Atlas de Toutes les Parties Connues du Globe Terrestre, Dresse pour l’Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements et du Commerce des Europeens dans les Deux Indes, issued under the direction of Guillaume Raynal and intended to update Europe’s understanding of Asia at a time of rapidly shifting imperial knowledge.
Bonne’s maps are admired for their mathematical clarity, absence of decorative excess, and fidelity to astronomical and survey data that had begun to circulate among European geographers by the 1780s. Upper India would have encompassed the northern Mughal domains, including Delhi, Oudh, Agra, Rohilkhand, the Punjab frontier, and adjoining tracts extending toward the Himalayas. The period was marked by instability within the late Mughal polity and the rising influence of the Marathas and the British East India Company; Bonne’s map reflects these shifting frontiers in its careful treatment of political boundaries, river systems, and principal towns.
b) Carte de la Partie Inferieure d l'Inde
1783
Copper engraving on paper
Print size: 9 x 12.5 in (22.5 x 32 cm)
Sheet size: 9.75 x 15 in (25 x 38.5 cm)
Folded: 10 x 7.5 in (25 x 19.5 cm)
Bonne’s 1783 Lower India map, alongside its companion Upper India sheet, reflects the height of late eighteenth-century French scientific cartography. Bonne, appointed Royal Hydrographer to the King, introduced a new aesthetic of precision and restraint to European mapping. His work is instantly recognisable for its mathematically consistent projections, the absence of decorative ornament, and a focus on optimal geographic clarity. Lower India would have encompassed the entirety of the peninsular region - stretching from the Vindhyas through the Deccan plateau, Mysore, the Carnatic, Malabar, and down to Cape Comorin - during a period of extraordinary political flux marked by Anglo-Mysore confrontations, Maratha influence across the upper Deccan, and the strengthening of British outposts along the Coromandel and Malabar coasts.
Bonne’s work was widely regarded as among the most authoritative French mappings of India before the arrival of large-scale British survey material. These sheets are therefore significant not merely as a geographical representation but as a distilled expression of how continental Europe conceptualised the northern Indian world in the final decades of the eighteenth century.
A particularly striking feature of both sheets is Bonne’s inclusion of directional arrows marking the Indian Ocean trade winds and their corresponding seasons. Unlike earlier decorative wind roses, these functional hydrographic indicators reflect Bonne’s official role as Royal Hydrographer to the King, providing navigational intelligence for the French Hydrographic Department. The maps delineate the two great monsoon cycles that governed Indian Ocean commerce since antiquity: the Southwest Monsoon (June–September), blowing northeastward and carrying vessels from Africa and the Red Sea toward the Malabar Coast, and the Northeast Monsoon (October–February), enabling return voyages westward during the dry season.
Together, these two sheets stand as authoritative expressions of late eighteenth-century French scientific geography—uniting political definition, hydrographic knowledge, and Enlightenment precision in one of the finest continental European mappings of India before the dominance of British survey cartography.
(Set of two)
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