Dutch Colonial Literature: Romanticism in the Tropics

Perhaps no other European nation had gathered so much practical information as Holland did before it sent its own Argonauts to the fabled Spice Islands. 2 It could rely on improved cartography, on what were called "mapbooks" or "reading maps" (atlases), and on a variety of "mirrors" or "treasuries" of the art of navigation. All this material had been charted or compiled by some of the foremost experts of that time such as Mercator, Ortelius, Plancius, Waghenaer, and Willem Barents.