David E. Parry - JP/Natalie Waschk

When starting out his book, author David E. Parry just wanted to write a simple one for collectors.

But as he began to read more and more about Indonesia, the Spice Islands and how important they were for the mapping in the world, he ended up with his book, The Cartography of the East Indian Islands.

The book, which is written in English, illustrates Old Dutch maps, which reflect the geographic history of Indonesia.

The reproductions of the original maps show the East Islands as the world'€™s largest archipelago and the home of the spice islands of the Moluccas, where sandalwood, maces and clover grew.

'€œI tried to write a reference book on maps for the collectors but not an academic one. So I also used easy to understand language,'€ Parry said during a book talk held as part of the Museum Week, themed '€œJalur Rempah [Spice Trail] '€“ The Untold Story'€, which runs until Sunday at the National Museum in Jakarta.

Just like Parry, the event tried to bring back the lost and often forgotten spice trade in Indonesia.

During the talk, he was explaining that the reason for the revolution in world cartography was the spice trade, especially the trade of five spices: pepper, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and mace. From the five, at least three were unique to ten small volcanic islands of Indonesia.

Most of the maps are in Parry'€™s private collections and exhibited in the Bartele Gallery, of which he is the curator.

The gallery, founded in 2009, is located in Kemang, Jakarta, and shows antique maps, prints, photographs, books and antiquities. A second Bartele Gallery was opened in 2014 in Langweer Friesland, the Netherlands.

His interest in collecting antique maps arose from his last 25 years working on urban and pastoral evolution projects in Indonesia as a soil scientist and remote sensing expert by using a variety of contemporary and old-fashioned topographic and thematic maps in his work.

With the publication of the book, Parry wants to demonstrate the pivotal role that the Renaissance explorers'€™ search for the Spice Islands of the Moluccas had by unrolling the map of the world and publishing the framework of global commerce.

The 241-page hard cover book is basically a history book.

'€œI hope it tells a story about both mapping in Indonesia and the development of the spice trade,'€ Parry explained.

He said the book is not an academic work but more like a story, which may serve as a useful reference for people who collect maps.

Based on the story, there are examples and details in the maps, which describe them.

'€œIf I do not have examples or photographs of the maps, I give a list of tables of maps because many looks the same but there are differences between their value and affect,'€ he said.

This combination of a story and history book reflects not only the history and development of the spice trade '€” it mentions as well that maps are a little bit more than just diagrams and symbolic representations of the earth'€™s continents.

'€œIt is a fact that for the local Indonesian it is not a tradition to make maps. But they have much knowledge about their area, their islands, their seas, their winds and much more.

'€˜But this knowledge was in their heads. Most of the mapped knowledge is from Westerners who learned from locals, who then wrote it down with their mathematical background,'€ Parry said.

'€” The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post
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