Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville

Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville (; born in Paris 11 July 169728 January 1782) was a French geographer and cartographer who greatly improved the standards of map-making. D'Anville became cartographer to the king, who purchased his cartographic materials, the largest collection in France. He made more than 200 maps during his lifetime, which are characterized by a careful, accurate work largely based on original research. In particular, D'Anville left unknown areas of continents blank and noted doubtful information as such, contrary to the lavish maps of his predecessors. His maps remained the reference point in cartography throughout the 19th century and were used by numerous explorers and travellers.

Biography

Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville was born in Paris on 11 July 1697, in the Kingdom of France. His passion for geographical research displayed itself from early years: aged twelve he was already amusing himself by drawing maps for Latin authors. Later, his friendship with the antiquarian, Abbé Longuerue, greatly aided his studies.

His first serious map, that of Ancient Greece, was published when he was fifteen. At the age of twenty-two, he was appointed one the king's geographers, and began to attract the attention of first authorities. D'Anville's studies embraced everything of geographical nature in the world's literature, as far as he could muster it: for this purpose, he not only searched ancient and modern historians, travelers and narrators of every description, but also poets, orators and philosophers. One of his cherished subjects was to reform geography by putting an end to the blind copying of older maps, by testing the commonly accepted positions of places through a rigorous examination of all the descriptive authority, and by excluding from cartography every name inadequately supported. Vast spaces, which had before been bordered with countries and cities, were thus suddenly reduced mostly to a blank.

D'Anville was at first employed in the humbler task of illustrating by maps the works of different travellers, such as Marchais, Charlevoix, Labat and du Halde. For the description of China by the last-named writer he was employed to make an atlas, which was published separately at the Hague in 1737. Information for the maps of China came from land surveys made across the Chinese empire by the order of the Kangxi Emperor from 17081716. D'Anville's China maps were called the "standard Western source for the geography of China and adjacent regions," throughout the 19th century.