Java Major and Java Minor: Their Changing Relative Positions and Shapes on the World Map following the first circumnavigation in the Victoria, 1519-1521, with particular reference to the Paris Gilt Globe of c.1528.

The first circumnavigation of the globe, 1519-22, was made in the Victoria, under the command, consecutively, of Ferdinand Magellan, Juan Serrano and Juan Sebastian Elcano. The Victoria’s track is depicted on the Globe Doré, or Paris Gilt Globe, made c.1528, recently displayed at the Mapping Our World exhibition at the National Library of Australia, 7 November 2013 to 10 March 2014. The globe has never had all its inscriptions and detail analysed, only its portrayal of the Americas; Henry Harrisse’s 1892 description of it includes only an illustration of its western hemisphere. The relative positions and shapes of Java Major and Java Minor on the Globe are of particular interest as illustrating the effect of the Victoria’s voyage on the World Map. They changed from the locations assigned to them by Henricus Martellus (1489) and Martin Behaim (1492) based on their understanding of Marco Polo’s account, but the mis-identification of Java Minor with the island of Madura still allowed the southern coast of Java Major to remain undefined. This in turn permitted Dutch and French cartographers, Gerard Mercator, Abraham Ortelius, Cornelius De Jode, and Jacques Desceliers, Guillaume Le Testu and Guillaume Brouscon, to identify Java Major as a promontory of the Terra Australis and with Polo’s Region of Locach. How did this mis-identification occur?