Jean Rotz, also called Johne Rotz, was a 16th-century French artist-cartographer. He was born to a Scottish father and a French mother.
Jean Rotz, also called Johne Rotz, was a 16th-century French artist-cartographer. He was born to a Scottish father and a French mother.
Rotz was a member of the school of the Dieppe maps. He may have accompanied Jean Parmentier to Sumatra in 1529, and he definitely went to Brazil in 1539. [1] His work was greatly influenced by these early French explorations, which induced him to create highly decorative maps. [2] [3]
Failing to find employment with King Francois I, Rotz went to England in 1542 and entered the service of Henry VIII. [4] He presented Henry with his manuscript atlas, the Boke of Idrography, which contained a two-hemisphere world map. This map showed the distraits of magallane (Strait of Magellan), the two Unfortunate Islands (Insulas desfortunadas), unnamed on the map, discovered during Ferdinand Magellan's voyage across the Pacific, and the strait between Lytel Java (Java Minor) and the Londe of Java (Java Major) through which the Victoria, the last surviving ship of Magellan's expedition, was thought to have passed on the return voyage to Spain. [5]
In 1542, Jean Rotz was hired by King Henry VIII, alongside some other Frenchmen to become privateers which led to the betrayal for King Henry VIII's policy at sea for religious differences. Rotz would eventually betrayed the King and England after King Henry VIII granted his family rights to own land, including his wife Coleta and his children. It is said that King Henry VIII trusted Rotz, but it was believed that Henry VIII bribed loyalty. Jean Rotz was hired by King Henry VIII, alongside some other Frenchmen to become privateers which led to the betrayal for King Henry VIII's policy at sea for religious differences. Around the same year, King Henry VIII was ordering a fleet of ships to conquer enemy territories that gained the attention of the French army. The French was more concerned about Rotz as stated in a letter to the Admiral:
"A Dieppois named Jean Roze, now in the service of the King of England, who gives him 160 crowns a year, "a very good-natured man, and very well versed in matters by the navy and navigation," asked Selve to write to the king, to be able to return to France with his wife and children, offering to pay "the money and finances which have accustomed to be paid for such provisions." Selve notified the Admiral about this, pointing out that it would be useful to secure the services of this personage, who seems very experienced, or at least to deprive the King of England of him." [6]
The reason why King Henry VIII was so faithful to foreign adversaries rather than his own adversaries was because Henry VIII was clever enough to attract the attention of French and their loyalty.
In the early nineteenth century, the resemblance of his Londe of Java to Australia was noted. Charles Ernest Coquebert de Montbret, having been able to examine the Rotz atlas at the British Museum during a visit to London following the Peace of Amiens in 1802, claimed in a lecture to the Société Philomathique de Paris in 1803 that its Londe of Java was evidence of a discovery of the east coast of Australia by Portuguese based in the Moluccas, who perhaps were accompanied by French seafarers who thereby found the opportunity to obtain the intelligence upon which the map, and others of the Dieppe school, was prepared. His claim was refuted by Frédéric Metz in a letter to the Revue Philosophique, Littéraire et Politique of 11 Novembre 1805. Metz noted the absence of New Guinea and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and pointed out that a chart that recorded the voyage of navigators who had gone as far as the southern extremity of the east coast of Australia could not have failed to indicate the breadth of sea that separated Australia from Java, whereas the Rotz map showed only a narrow channel between the two.
The Italian traveler Ludovico di Varthema visited Java in 1506 and said it “prope in inmensum patet (extends almost beyond measure)”. Rotz apparently identified this “Java patalis” with the Regio Patalis, a huge promontory of the Terra Australis, depicted on the 1531 world map of the royal cosmographer, Oronce Fine. [7]
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Terra Australis was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Its existence was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that continental land in the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the Southern Hemisphere. This theory of balancing land has been documented as early as the 5th century on maps by Macrobius, who uses the term Australis on his maps.
The maritime European exploration of Australia consisted of several waves of European seafarers who sailed the edges of the Australian continent. Dutch navigators were the first Europeans known to have explored and mapped the Australian coastline. The first documented encounter was that of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, in 1606. Dutch seafarers also visited the west and north coasts of the continent, as did French explorers.
Giovanni da Verrazzano was an Italian (Florentine) explorer of North America, in the service of King Francis I of France.
The St. Marys River is a 126-mile-long (203 km) river in the southeastern United States. The river was known to the Indians of the area as Thlathlothlaguphka, or Phlaphlagaphgaw, meaning "rotten fish". French explorer Jean Ribault named the river the Seine when he encountered it in 1562. From near its source in the Okefenokee Swamp, to its mouth at the Atlantic Ocean, it forms a portion of the border between the U.S. states of Georgia and Florida. The river also serves as the southernmost point in the state of Georgia. The St. Marys River rises as a tiny stream, River Styx, flowing from the western edge of Trail Ridge, the geological relic of a barrier island/dune system, and into the southeastern Okefenokee Swamp. Arching to the northwest, it loses its channel within the swamp, then turns back to the southwest and reforms a stream, at which point it becomes the St. Marys River. Joined by another stream, Moccasin Creek, the river emerges from the Okefenokee Swamp at Baxter, Florida/Moniac, Georgia. It then flows south, then east, then north, then east-southeast intersecting I-95 near Yulee, and finally emptying its waters into the Atlantic, near St. Marys, Georgia and Fernandina Beach, Florida.
France Antarctique was a French colony in Rio de Janeiro, in modern-day Brazil, which existed between 1555 and 1567, and had control over the coast from Rio de Janeiro to Cabo Frio. The colony quickly became a haven for Huguenots, and was ultimately destroyed by the Portuguese in 1567.
Odet de Selve was a French diplomat.
The Dieppe maps are a series of world maps and atlases produced in Dieppe, France, in the 1540s, 1550s, and 1560s. They are large hand-produced works, commissioned for wealthy and royal patrons, including Kings Henry II of France and Henry VIII of England. The Dieppe school of cartographers included Pierre Desceliers, Jean Rotz, Guillaume Le Testu, Guillaume Brouscon and Nicolas Desliens.
The theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia claims that early Portuguese navigators were the first Europeans to sight Australia between 1521 and 1524, well before the arrival of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606 on board the Duyfken who is generally considered to be the first European discoverer. While lacking generally accepted evidence, this theory is based on the following:
Jean Ango (1480–1551) was a Norman shipowner who provided ships to Francis I, King of France, for exploration of the globe. A native of Dieppe, Ango took over his father's import-export business and ventured into the spice trade with Africa and India. He was one of the first French traders to challenge the monopoly of Spain and Portugal, in addition to trading with the eastern Mediterranean, the British Isles, and the Low Countries. He also helped to finance the voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano and Jacques Cartier.
Battista Agnese was a cartographer from the Republic of Genoa, who worked in the Venetian Republic.
Beyond Capricorn: How Portuguese adventurers secretly discovered and mapped Australia and New Zealand 250 years before Captain Cook is a 2007 book by journalist Peter Trickett on the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia. Although its thesis is similar to that advanced by Kenneth McIntyre in 1977, Lawrence Fitzgerald in 1984 and others, the publisher and some news reports presented it as being a new theory on the discovery of Australia.
Jean Parmentier (1494–1529), born in Dieppe, France, was a navigator, cartographer, and poet. Jean and his brother Raoul made numerous voyages for the shipowner Jean Ango.
La grande isle de Java was, according to Marco Polo, the largest island in the world; his Java Minor was the actual island of Sumatra, which takes its name from the city of Samudera situated on its northern coast.
Pierre Desceliers was a French cartographer of the Renaissance and an eminent member of the Dieppe School of Cartography. He is considered the father of French hydrography.
Guillaume Le Testu, sometimes referred to as Guillaume Le Têtu, was a French privateer, explorer and navigator. He was one of the foremost cartographers of his time and an author of the Dieppe maps. His maps were distinguished by their sophistication and detail; they influenced generations of cartographers, navigators and explorers.
Regio Patalis is Latin for “the region of Patala”, that is the region around the ancient city of Patala at the mouth of the Indus River in Sindh, Pakistan. The historians of Alexander the Great state that the Indus parted into two branches at the city of Patala before reaching the sea, and the island thus formed was called Patalene, the district of Patala. Alexander constructed a harbour at Patala.
Rotz Glacier is a tributary glacier 9 nautical miles (17 km) long and 2 nautical miles (3.7 km) wide. It flows west from Wakefield Highland, central Antarctic Peninsula, into Airy Glacier at a point due south of Mount Timosthenes. Photographed by Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition (RARE) on November 27, 1947. Surveyed by Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) in December 1958 and November 1960. Named by United Kingdom Antarctic Place-Names Committee (UK-APC) after Jean Rotz, 16th century French chartmaker and writer on the principles of navigation, who designed an elaborate magnetic compass and became hydrographer to King Henry VIII in 1542.
The English overseas possessions, also known as the English colonial empire, comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonised, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the former Kingdom of England during the centuries before the Acts of Union of 1707 between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland created the Kingdom of Great Britain. The many English possessions then became the foundation of the British Empire and its fast-growing naval and mercantile power, which until then had yet to overtake those of the Dutch Republic, the Kingdom of Portugal, and the Crown of Castile.
Francis Fletcher was a priest of the Church of England who accompanied Sir Francis Drake on his circumnavigation of the world from 1577 to 1580 and kept a written account of it.
The Vallard Atlas is a world atlas, one of the Dieppe school of maps, produced in 1547. It is believed to have been owned by Nicolas Vallard, its authorship being unknown.
