About the Cover

Front Cover.

Cover design: Sophia Varcados, Northern Illinois University

Cover: Port et bourg de Mergui (Port and Town of Mergui), Jacques Nicolas Bellin (1703– 1772), Map, 1764, 22x18 cm. Burma Art Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University, Founders Memorial Library. G7724.M41764.B45

This black and white image was originally a rendering of a beautiful hand colored engraved maritime chart of the port and city of Mergui (now Myeik), located in Southern Myanmar in Tanintharyi Region. This chart, drawn by Jacques Nicolas Bellin (1703–1772), was initially a component of Le Petit Atlas Maritime: Recueil de Cartes et Plans des Quatre Parties du Monde en Cinq Volumes, published in Paris in 1764.

Bellin was a renowned cartographer and hydrographer. He trained at a very young age at the famous Dépôt des Cartes et Plans de la Marine (also known as Dépôt de la Marine, where navigational charts were made and kept in France under royal patronage). He produced numerous maritime atlases; especially the Petit Atlas Maritime, which comprised 580 individual prints. He was well-known for taking extreme care to render the finest details with the highest accuracy. Much of his work was more widely distributed and reproduced in numerous other atlases and travelogues, such as Histoire Générale des Voyages d’Antoine Prévost, which assembled numerous small format maps and charts, and was published in fifteen volumes.

Myeik (Mergui) is located in Southern Myanmar on the Bay of Bengal. Its port is well-protected by Kadan Island. Ancient Ptolemaic maps indicated Regnum Mursuli or Mergui (Tenasserim). It was visited in the 1420s by Nicolo de Conti, who, while entering the river called Tenaserin, noted the presence of numerous elephants (Suarez 1999: 122). But, the oldest description of the actual city of Mergui, where “. . . one can find silk-making, cockfights, Brazilwood and benzoin,” is attributed to Varthema. In the first decade of the sixteenth century, he elaborated, “(t)he city of Tarnassari is situated near the sea. It is a level place and well-watered, and has a good port that is a river on the side toward the north . . . The houses of this city are well-surrounded by walls (Suarez 1999: 123).”

Mergui later became an important port for European traders, particularly for the Portuguese, as they could source merchandise from Pegu and Siam, including wine stored in the famous Martaban jars. From there, such products could be exported to India.

By the 18th century, when this chart was originally surveyed, France and England were in competition. Mergui was considered by the British officer Alexander Hamilton as being an area “infested by the pirates,” hence not as desirable an entrepôt as Rangoon. That explains—as indicated here—the presence of a French fort and also places where the French could build boats and careen their ships. As a French settlement, it did not last long. In 1824-26, under King Bagyidaw, the first Anglo-Burmese war ensued and Tenasserim, along with Arakan, were annexed by the British.

Today, centuries later, the recent interest of Mergui Archipelago is moving toward a completely new development. It is appropriate to consider it in our ratiocinations of “Progress from Whom? And for What?”