Carte réduite des Détroits de Malaca, Sincapour, et du Gouverneur: dressée au dépost des cartes et plans de la marine pour la service des vaisseaux du Roy par ordre de M. de Machault, garde des sceaux de France Ministre et Secretaire d’Etat aiant le Departement de la Marine par M. Bellin, Ing.r de la marine et du Depost des Plans sur les memoires et la carte manuscrite du Sr. Dauge Pilote au service de la campagne des Indes

A fine and exceptionally scarce first state of Bellin’s important chart of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, engraved for the Dépôt de la Marine.

This example represents the full rhumb-grid state, with principal, secondary, and partial quarter rhumbs, extending to the borders. These lines, deeply engraved and here printed in a distinctive green-brown ink, differ materially from the more commonly encountered atlas state, in which the rhumb net was reduced and confined to the central compass roses. The sheet exhibits the engraver’s marginal calibration marks, used to maintain rhumb-line accuracy across a plate of this size—features removed in later impressions.

One of the most detailed mid-eighteenth-century delineations of the Malay Peninsula, Singapore Strait, Riau Archipelago, and the eastern approaches to Malacca. Bellin includes coastal profiles (“Vues des Terres dans les Détroits”) across the upper margin—an essential aid for pilots navigating this intricate and reef-strewn region.