Vue de Surate prise de la Riviere / Vue de Dabul
Two Ports of Western India—Surat and Dabhol in Bellin’s Maritime Vision
a) Jacob van der Schley after Jacques-Nicolas Bellin
Vue de Surate prise de la Riviere
Circa 1761
Copper engraving on paper
Print size: 7.25 x 10.75 in (18.5 x 27.5 cm)
Sheet size: 10 x 14.5 in (25 x 37 cm)
The engraving presents a sweeping prospect of the city as seen from the Tapti River, with sailing ships, smaller craft, and waterfront structures arranged in a composition typical of mid-eighteenth-century French marine views. The print captures Surat at the height of its historical and commercial significance. The detailed rendering of ships, fortifications, and shoreline activity reflects Bellin’s technical precision and the documentary ambition of Prévost’s encyclopaedic project.
Conquered by the Mughals in 1573, the city became the empire’s most prosperous western port, serving as the principal embarkation point for pilgrims travelling to the Hajj. During the Mughal era, Surat’s population fluctuated dramatically: during the monsoon months, when ships could safely navigate the coast, the city swelled with merchants, sailors, and travellers from across the Indian Ocean world.
Surat’s importance to European powers was immense. In 1612, the English established their first factory in India here, a watershed moment in the rise of the East India Company. The port’s fortunes, however, were violently interrupted when Shivaji sacked Surat twice, the first time in 1664, signalling the growing power of the Marathas and the shifting political landscape of Western India.
b) Jacob van der Schley after Jacques-Nicolas Bellin
Vue de Dabul
Circa 1761
Copper engraving on paper
Print size: 7.5 x 10.75 in (19 x 27.5 cm)
Sheet size: 10 x 14 in (25.5 x 35.5 cm)
The view records the fortified coastal town of Dabul (Dabhol) in the Ratnagiri district of present-day Maharashtra. Dabul was an opulent and strategically important port during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, flourishing first under the Bahmani Sultanate and later the Adil Shahi rulers of Bijapur. Its commanding location between Chaul and Goa made it the most significant port of the South Konkan, controlling the maritime approaches to the Bahmani capital at Bidar.
The engraving presents Dabul’s harbour with shipping in the foreground and defensive structures rising along the shoreline—a composition typical of Bellin’s maritime plates, balancing clarity of information with aesthetic refinement. The town’s prosperity declined by the late seventeenth century, culminating in its capture by Shivaji around 1660, when the Maratha expansion reshaped the political geography of the western coast.
A rare and visually coherent pair of eighteenth-century maritime prospects depicting two historically significant ports of Western India—Surat in Gujarat and Dabhol on the Konkan coast—engraved by Jacob van der Schley after topographical and hydrographic material prepared under the direction of Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, premier géographe de la Marine. Both plates were issued within Antoine-François Prévost’s monumental Histoire Générale des Voyages, one of the Enlightenment’s most ambitious geographical publishing enterprises.
Surat, conquered by the Mughals in 1573, became the empire’s principal western port and the site of the English East India Company’s first factory in India in 1612. Dabhol, strategically situated between Chaul and Goa, flourished as an important Konkan harbour before declining amid shifting regional power in the seventeenth century. Together, these scarce companion views form an evocative visual record of two ports central to the maritime history of early modern India.
(Set of two)
NON-EXPORTABLE
This lot is offered at RESERVE
This lot will be shipped in "as is" condition. For further details, please refer to the images of individual lots as reference for the condition of each lot.