A highly desirable map of the east coast of North America in its third state without the date in the title. When Koeman published his ‘Atlantes Neerlandici’, in 1970, he conferred on this rare map the title of the first sea chart of the New Netherlands. I stated in ‘The Mapping of North America’ that the Theunis Jacobsz of c.1650 pre-dates it. Colom’s chart is however superior, being able to draw upon the considerable advances made by Janssonius’ ‘BELGII NOVI …’, in 1651.

“The coverage of the map is greater than Janssonius’, but less than that of Jacobsz. A careful examination of the nomenclature reveals that Colom derived elements of his cartography from the map of Janssonius, 1651, rather than Visscher, c.1655. This helps to support the dates of both the Visscher and the Colom. The Delaware Bay and River are much improved over Jacobsz, as is the area between Chesapeake Bay and the Outer Banks. Curiously two Jamestowns are depicted, one at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. Remnants of Jacobsz do survive such as the use of ‘Bloemers kil’ on the west bank of Delaware Bay. There is no recognition of the Dutch victory over the Swedish colonies here. Long Island is one unified island, as Janssonius depicted it, although like other areas of the map, it shows independent sources. A few English settlements are noted, such as ‘Stamfoort’ and ‘Nieuwer haven’, but none appear in the Connecticut River valley, only the Dutch fort of ‘de Hoop’. One large improvement over all of them is the recognition of Boston as one of the three most important towns on that coast. It is not present on the Jacobsz, Janssonius or Visscher maps.” (Burden).

The first state of this map is dated 1656, but its appearance in the two Dutch editions of the ‘Zee-Atlas’ along with a French one unidentified by Koeman were no earlier than c.1658. In these the pagination was added lower right and altered from ’13’ to ’16’ in short succession. Within a short time, the atlas faced competition from those of van Alphen, Doncker, van Loon, and even his father. It does not seem to have fared well, being very rare today.

Arnold Colom (1623/4-68) was the son of Jacob Aerstz. Colom (1600-73) from Dordrecht, a printer and publisher of maps, globes, and books. “Father and son appear to have followed separate careers at first, Arnold producing his own independent atlases. In fact, his world atlas was published before that of his father. The first Dutch sea atlas of the world was Joannes Janssonius’ of 1650. However, that atlas was not particularly uniform or complete. Colom’s was large in format and is one of the most important of all the Dutch sea atlases produced. Burden (1996) 316; Koeman (1967) vol. 4 pp. 114-17 & p. 165 Don 16 no. 76; McCorkle (2001) 656.1; The A. E. Nordenskiöld Collection (1979) no. 53; Phillips (1909-) nos. 464 & 3330; Stokes (1915) vol. 2 p. 154; Suárez (1992) pp. 147-8.