Java la Grande

Jean Rotz was a cartographer of the Dieppe school of cartographers in France and presented his Boke of Idrography to Henry VIII of England in 1542. It had originally been prepared for Francis I King of France, but when Rotz failed to find a position in the French court he moved to England. His Boke contains a general world map and 11 other charts of regions of the world. It can therefore make some claim to being the first atlas, predating Abraham Ortelius by about 28 years.

Java la Grande is the large land mass south of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, and could possibly represent some charting of the Australian coast by French or Portuguese navigators. It is part of the chart for the Far East and East Indies. Orientation of the map is with south at the top. It is considered that the map is derived in part from an earlier Portuguese chart and it contains a mixture of French and Portuguese names. One name 'Coste dangereuse' would later be construed by some scholars as a reference to the reefs along the east coast of Australia and evidence of Portuguese discoveries there.

Java la Grande was considered either as a separate very large island or as part of a vast southern continent or Terra Australis incognita. The ancient Greeks had hypothesised that there should exist a large land mass to counter balance Europe and Asia. When Ptolemy of Alexandria published his Geographia circa 150AD he produced the hypothetical southern continent of Terra Australis nondum cognita, or the Unknown South Land. In Ptolemy's map of the world he joined the known east coast of Africa with East Asia, landlocking the Indian Ocean. By the early 16th century, Africa had been rounded by Portuguese explorers and India and the East Indies reached. The Indian Ocean could no longer be considered to be land-locked. Terra Australis nondum cognita was being reduced in size, and in the approaching decades of the early 17th century, Australia would begin to take its proper shape on the world map. Java la Grande was an interim stage and it has not been conclusively proven that it represents true discovery by Europeans.

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