Holland Map 1811 Hand-Colored Union Atlas Print - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague

This map of Holland was published in London on July 25, 1811, by William Darton Junior of 58 Holborn Hill. It comes from Darton's Union Atlas, which holds 38 maps of the empires, kingdoms and states of the known world, designed as a companion to the gazetteers and geography books then in use. The title page describes the whole as clearly engraved by artists of eminence and carefully colored, and it adds maps of the Roman Empire and Ancient Greece. The sheet measures 25 by 29 centimeters and is a hand-colored engraving in full color. It was engraved with care and given full hand color, and the Roman Empire and Ancient Greece maps in the same volume show how broad the atlas was meant to be.

In 1811 the Netherlands lay under the influence of the Napoleonic Empire, and the country had been absorbed into the French Empire the year before. The map's neat outlines of regions and administrative divisions reflect those political realities, and its colors separate each division from its neighbors. Darton's atlas was meant for use at home and in the classroom, where a student could look up a country in a gazetteer and find it here at a glance. The atlas title bears the date January 25, 1812, and the volume was bound in 1813, so the sheet circulated through the years when the French hold on Holland finally gave way.

A collector of English atlas maps of the Napoleonic age, a family with roots in Holland, or a reader of European history will find a thoughtful gift here. TheMapVault's Dower sheet of 1832 shows the same country two decades later, whereas this Darton map belongs to the closing years of the French era. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.