Neueste Karte von Hindostan Bengalen etc. etc. Mit der Anzeige der Strassen, Paesse, und genauster Eitheilung der britschen Besitzungen in Ostindien Verfusst von Jakob Rennell Ingenieur Major. - Rare Book Insider
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Neueste Karte von Hindostan Bengalen etc. etc. Mit der Anzeige der Strassen, Paesse, und genauster Eitheilung der britschen Besitzungen in Ostindien Verfusst von Jakob Rennell Ingenieur Major.

Vienna: F.A. Schraemble, 1788. Original outline colour. Four sheets conjoined, total 1190 x 1460mm. Minor repairs to binding folds. A huge map of India, based on Robert Sayer's four-sheet enlarged version of James Rennell's landmark map of India of 1782, but reintroducing the original's decorative vignette of Britannia receiving a 'Shaster' ('Shastra', a Hindu book of rules). Beginning in 1764, James Rennell (1742-1830) surveyed Bengal for the East India Company under the patronage of Robert Clive & Warren Hastings, with a particular focus on the rivers, so important to trade in the absence of a regular road system, especially in the approaches to Calcutta. After over a decade of work Rennell was forced to retire, having been seriously wounded in 1766, and retired to England, where he started work on his 'atlas'. The quality of his work was such that when it was first published in 1780 (not 1779 as is often quoted because of the date on the maps) it earned him a fellowship of the Royal Society (1781) and the sobriquet 'the father of Indian cartography'.
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