Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter creating the English East India Company (EIC) to trade east of the Cape of Good Hope. This legal foundation mattered for mapping because long-distance trade required better route knowledge, coastal views, soundings (water depth measurements), and reliable charts for repeated voyages.
The Dutch Republic chartered the VOC as a state-backed trading company with extensive powers overseas. The VOC’s scale and organization helped turn chart-making into an institutional activity—collecting sailing information, standardizing routes, and treating some geographic knowledge as a strategic asset.
The VOC appointed Hessel Gerritsz as its first exclusive cartographer in 1617. This appointment formalized a company-run charting program that collected voyage information and turned it into maps, often keeping the newest geographic intelligence under controlled access.
In 1619 the VOC took Jayakarta and renamed it Batavia (now Jakarta), building it into its main hub in Asia. Central control made it easier to gather ship reports and update regional sailing knowledge into working charts used across many voyages.
By the late 1620s, Gerritsz and other Dutch mapmakers began adding new sightings of Australia’s coastline to updated maps. This shows how company voyages fed directly into chart revisions, improving future navigation and expanding European geographic knowledge in the Indian Ocean region.
After Gerritsz died in 1632, Willem Jansz. Blaeu took over the VOC cartographer role in early 1633. The continuity of this post indicates the VOC’s long-term commitment to systematic map-making as part of its state-like administration and shipping operations.
Starting in 1662, Joan Blaeu issued the Atlas Maior in multiple volumes over several years. While not a company manual, it reflects the Dutch Republic’s wider cartographic capacity—fed in part by overseas activity—and shaped how Europeans visualized global geography during the late 1600s.
In 1669, John Seller published a navigation manual aimed at practical use at sea. Works like this supported England’s push to strengthen domestic navigation skills and reduce dependence on imported Dutch nautical knowledge.
In March 1671, John Seller became Hydrographer to the King, a state-recognized role connected to nautical publishing and chart production. This helped England develop a more organized, home-based charting and pilot-book industry that could support EIC voyages and other trade.
In 1671, Seller published the first volume of The English Pilot, a collection of charts and sailing directions. The work often adapted Dutch chart plates, but it marked a major step toward regular English production of pilot books—tools that made routes repeatable and safer for commercial fleets.
A 1694 act reduced the East India Company’s ability to block other English traders (often called “interlopers”) from trading to Asia. This increased competition and pressure for better navigation information, since more ships from different backers were now attempting long routes and unfamiliar coasts.
In 1698, a “New Company” (the English Company Trading to the East Indies) received a charter backed by a major government loan scheme. The split intensified competition not only for trade but also for operational knowledge such as sailing directions, port information, and usable charts—key inputs to any large-scale charting program.
Dutch and English East India Company charting programs (1600–1700)