Joannes or Johannes De Laet (Latinized as Ioannes Latius) (1581 in Antwerp &ndash; buried 15 December 1649, in Leiden) was a Dutch geographer and director of the Dutch West India Company. Philip Burden <!-- presumably in The Mapping of North America, but I found this on an ephemeral web page that had a copy of L'Histoire du Nouveau Monde... for sale; someone may want to check this reference --> called his History of the New World, "...arguably the finest description of the Americas published in the seventeenth century" and "...one of the foundation maps of Canada". De Laet was the first to print maps with the names Manhattan, New Amsterdam (now New York City) and Massachusetts.

Early life and education

De Laet was born in Antwerp in 1581. In 1584, when he was about three years old, the city fell to Spanish forces during the Eighty Years' War. His family left Antwerp and settled in Amsterdam in the northern Netherlands. As a director he was involved in the administration of the company during the early decades of Dutch commercial expansion in the Atlantic world.

He also edited Pliny's Historia naturalis and Vitruvius' De architectura, wrote a detailed account of the New World and compiled an (unpublished) Old English-Latin dictionary – to mention just a selection of his forty publications.

Correspondents

His correspondents include the English antiquaries William Camden, Sir Henry Spelman, Sir William Boswell, Abraham Wheelock, Sir Simonds D'Ewes, James Usher, Patrick Young, John Morris, and the Danish antiquary Ole Worm.

Death

De Laet died in December 1649 in The Hague, aged 68. He was buried in the Pieterskerk, Leiden.

Works

History of the New World

thumb|[[Grand Manan and Campobello island as shown on the 1630 map of de Laet.]]

His History of the New World was published in several editions by Bonaventure & Abraham Elseviers, Leiden. The first edition was published in Dutch in 1625 as

Nieuwe Wereldt ofte Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien, uit veelerhande Schriften ende Aen-teekeningen van verscheyden Natien; a second edition also in Dutch, came out in 1630 as Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien door Joannes De Laet. Tweede druk: In ontallycke placesen verbetert, vermeerdert, met eenige nieuwe caerten, beelden van verscheijden dieren ende planten verciert.

A Latin edition from 1633, prepared by himself, was entitled Novus Orbis seu descriptionis Indiae Occidentalis Libri XVIII authore Joanne De Laet Antverp. Novis tabulis geographicis et variis animantium, Plantarum Fructuumque iconibus illustrata; in 1640 he published a French edition, in his own translation, as L'Histoire du Nouveau Monde ou description des Indes Occidentales, contenant dix-huict livres, enrichi de nouvelles tables geographiqiues & figures des animaux, plantes & fruicts.

Each successive edition had significantly updated maps.

Other works

  • The Empire of the Great Mogul, translated by J.S. Hoyland with S.N. Bannerjee. Taraporevela, Bombay, 1928. Reissued Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1975, .
  • "Persia" (Latin: Persia seu Regni Persici Status Variaque Itinera in atque per Persiam : cum Aliquot Iconibus Incolarum), LVGD. BATAV. ex officina Elzeviriana, Anna MDCXXXIII (1633).

Notes and references

Notes

References

  • J. A. F. Bekkers, Correspondence of John Morris with Johannes de Laet (1634–1649) (Assen, 1970).
  • Rolf H. Bremmer Jr and P. G. Hoftijzer, eds., Johannes de Laet (1581-169): A Leiden Polymath, special issue of Lias. Sources and Documents Relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas, vol. 25/2 (1998), 135–229, with contributions on the contents of his scholarly correspondence, his role in the Synod of Dort, his polemics with Hugo Grotius on the origin of the Native Americans, on his personal library, and on his Vitruvius edition.
  • Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, '"Mine is Bigger than Yours": The Anglo-Saxon Collections of Johannes de Laet (1581-1649) and Sir Symonds D'Ewes', Anglo-Saxon Books and Their Readers, ed. Thomas N. Hall and Donald Scragg (Kalamazoo, MI, 2008), 136–174.
  • Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  • Genealogical date from Descendants of Johannes de Laet (in Dutch)
  • Tierra Firma item Nuevo Reyno de Granada atque Popayan, a map of New Granada from L'Histoire du Nouveau Monde...
  • Map of New England, 1624
  • Open Library. Joannes de Laet 1593 - 1649