Europe's search for a seaway to the Indies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, eastwards around the African continent and westwards across the Atlantic, totally altered the look of world maps, led to the European discovery of America and created a revolution in the fields of cartography, navigation, geography and ocean-going ship design.

This volume seeks to chart that quest through the maps made of the East Indian Islands, or India Insulae Orientalis, the larger Southeast Asian region to which the true Spice Islands belong, from classical times through to the beginning of the nineteenth century. It provides the map collector with a comprehensive reference that will enable both the amateur enthusiast and the specialist to identify the maps of the region. This is not a definitive carto-bibliography of the East Indian Islands, but rather a first attempt to present in chronological order an account of the mapping of a region that has had a seminal influence on world history and that has, in the cartographical sense, been rather ignored as a collective entity by cartographical historians."--jacket.