Early Mapping of the Pacific

The Pacific Ocean remained largely mysterious until the latter part of the eighteenth century, when a series of monumental voyages brought most of its heretofore unknown archipelagos to the mapmaker’s pen. Until then the evolving image of the ocean had been moulded as much by the cartographer’s whimsy as by the explorer’s survey. Using a cornucopia of rare and beautiful maps, this book traces the exploration and charting of the Earth’s largest ocean, weaving an odyssey stretching from Japan and the Philippines on the west, Australia and New Zealand in the south, and east through the varied islands of Oceania, including Tahiti, Hawaii, and even the ‘island’ of California. The story of the maps was often the story of the explorers and islanders themselves.