Jacques Nicolas Bellin (French pronunciation:[ʒaknikɔlabɛlɛ̃]; 1703 – 21 March 1772) was a Frenchhydrographer,geographer, and member of the French intellectual group called thephilosophes.
Bellin was born in Paris. He was hydrographer of France'shydrographic office, member of theAcadémie de Marine and of theRoyal Society of London. Over a 50-year career, he produced many maps of particular interest to theMinistère de la Marine. His maps of Canada and of French territories in North America (New France,Acadia,Louisiana) are particularly valuable. He died atVersailles.
In 1721, at age 18, he was appointed hydrographer (chief cartographer) to the French Navy. In August 1741, he became the firstIngénieur de la Marine of the Dépot des cartes et plans de la Marine (the French Hydrographical Office) and was named Official Hydrographer of the French King.
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During his reign the Depot published a prodigious number of charts and maps, among which were large folio-format sea-charts of France, theNeptune Francois. He also produced a number of sea-atlases of the world, e.g., theAtlas Maritime and theHydrographie Francaise. These gained fame, distinction and respect all over Europe and were republished throughout the 18th and even in the succeeding century.
Bellin also created smaller format maps such as the1764 Petit Atlas Maritime (5 vols.) containing 580 finely detailed charts.
Bellin set a very high standard of workmanship and accuracy thus gaining for France a leading role in European cartography and geography. Many of his maps were copied by other mapmakers of Europe.
He was one of theEncyclopédistes, a group of 18th century intellectuals in France who compiled the 35-volumeEncyclopédie which was edited byDenis Diderot andJean le Rond d'Alembert. Bellin contributed 994 articles.
The Encyclopédistes, were part of the group calledphilosophes among whose members were the great minds of theAge of Enlightenment, e.g.,Montesquieu,Voltaire,Rousseau,Baron d'Holbach.
![Carte Reduite du Globe Terrestre by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin 1764]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aCarte_Reduite_du_Globe_Terrestre_by_Jacques-Nicolas_Bellin_1764.jpg)
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Bellin contributed a number of maps to 15-vol.Histoire Générale des Voyages ofAntoine François Prévost or simply known l'Abbé Prevost. One of these maps led to a geographical blunder whose impact reverberates to this day. This was the map of the Philippines which Bellin copied from a world-famous chart produced in 1734 by the Spanish missionary to the Philippines,Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde.
Unlike many other European mapmakers of the time who outright appropriated Murillo's map, Bellin had the intellectual integrity to fully credit Murillo as his source, an open acknowledgement shown in the titlecartouche of Bellin's map which came out the same year as the original work by Murillo.
Shown in Bellin's map was an island named "Limasava", a word invented in 1667 by Spanish friar,Fr. Francisco Combés, S.J., to refer to the way station of theArmada de Molucca under the command of the Portuguese captain-generalFernao de Magalhaes during its navigation inPhilippine waters. Combés, who had not read a single eyewitness account of theMagellan expedition relied on two sources, the hopelessly garbled Italian translation of the Antonio Pigafetta account byGiovanni Battista Ramusio and the secondhand account byAntonio de Herrera y Tordesillas. Ramusio wrote the fleet anchored in March–April 1521 in Butuan in Mindanao, and from there sailed for Cebu with a brief stopover at "Messana". In the authentic Pigafetta account, the port was an isle namedMazzaua while the stopover isle was namedGatighan.Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas gave a faithful narration of the Mazzaua anchorage.[citation needed]
Combés disregarded de Herrera's version and adopted Ramusio's. He wrote that Magellan's fleet had anchored at Butuan and from there sailed for Cebu making a stop at a way station he namedLimasaua.
Five years earlier than Combés, Fr. Francisco Colín wrote the Armada moored at Butuan from March–April 1521 where Magellan and his men together with the natives celebrated an Easter Sunday mass on 31 March 1521. From Butuan the fleet sailed for Cebu making a brief stop at a way station he called "Dimasaua", an invented word meaning "this is not the Mazagua of Antonio de Herrera where supposedly an Easter Sunday mass was held which I already said happened in Butuan."[citation needed]
This episode was projected in the 1734 map made by Murillo who used Combés name, "Limassava" not "Dimasaua" which map Bellin copied.
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In 1789, AugustinianCarlo Amoretti, Italian Encyclopedist and librarian ofBiblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, discovered the authentic Italian manuscript ofAntonio Pigafetta among the scattered holdings of the library. Here it came out that the port of March–April 1521 was notButuan butMazaua. Amoretti, who himself had not read any of five eyewitness reports of the incident including two French versions of Pigafetta's account, asserted in a footnote that Mazaua was probably the isle namedLimasava in Bellin's map, thus interchanging the real port of Mazaua with the way stationGatighan.
Largely with the appearance of the eyewitness account ofGinés de Mafra, the only seaman in Magellan's fleet to return to Mazaua, whose testimony reveals a concrete, measurable description of Mazaua, the skein starting from the garbled version ofPigafetta byRamusio to the mishandling by Combés to Bellin and finally to Amoretti has been unraveled: Pigafetta'sGatighan is Bellin's Limasava.[citation needed]
Published during his lifetime were:
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