Netherlands Map 1831 Burr General Atlas Print with Five Distance Scales - Amsterdam, Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam

David H. Burr drew and published this Kingdom of the Netherlands in New York in 1831, in a series of maps for a general atlas printed by Sleight and Robinson. The map measures 32 by 25 centimeters on a sheet of 43 by 35 and is a hand-colored engraving. It shows political boundaries, cities, roads, canals, topography, vegetation, drainage, shorelines and islands, with relief in hachures. Five bar scales are given, in Dutch and German miles, Flemish miles, French leagues, French post leagues and British miles, together with lines of latitude and longitude. It was entered according to the act of Congress on November 11, 1831. The back cover of the volume carries editorial notices from eleven periodicals, among them the New York Commercial Advertiser, which shows how the series was promoted to its first subscribers.

The map comes from the first number of the series, which held Michigan, Maine, Ohio, the Netherlands and a map of twenty-five miles round the city of New York, five sheets in all. The volume was bound in paper covers, with eleven notices from periodicals printed on the back. The date places the sheet just after the Belgian Revolution of 1830, which separated Belgium from the Netherlands, and the roads and canals drawn here show how busy the lowland country was with trade. Burr later issued the full atlas in 1835, and this early number is a scarce survivor of how it first appeared.

A collector of American atlas cartography, a family with roots in the Netherlands, or a reader of the history of canals and trade will find a rare gift here. TheMapVault's Finley sheet of Holland, also from 1831, is a Philadelphia product, whereas this Burr map is the New York view with its five distance scales. 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.