1705 MORTIER, P. - Carte Des Costes De L Afrique ou est compris une Partie de Guinée, le Royaume De Benin, l Isle de St. Thomas &c. Levée Par Ordre Expres des Roys De Portugal sous qui on en a Fait la Decouverte.

Stunning map of the west coast of Africa with insets: Isle d' Ascencion & Isle de St. Helene. From "Neptunus, de Fransche, of nieuwe atlas van de zeekarten, opgenommen en gegraveerd door uitdrukkelyke order des Konings, tot het gebruik van zyne zeemachten ... ".

The island was sighted on 21 May 1502 by the four ships of the 3rd Portuguese Armada commanded by Galician navigator João da Nova during the return voyage to Lisbon, and he named it Santa Helena after Saint Helena of Constantinople.
The Dutch Republic formally claimed Saint Helena in 1633, although there is no evidence that they ever occupied it. The Dutch lost interest in the island after establishing their Cape of Good Hope colony.

In 1657, Oliver Cromwell granted the East India Company (EIC) a charter to govern Saint Helena and, the following year, the company decided to fortify the island and settle it with planters.

In 1815, the British government selected Saint Helena as the place of exile for Napoleon Bonaparte after he lost the Battle of Waterloo. He was taken to the island in October 1815. Napoleon stayed at the Briars pavilion, on the grounds of the Balcombe family's home until his permanent residence at Longwood House was completed in December 1815. He died there on 5 May 1821.

Parts of the item are heightened in gold.
Read more about maps heightened in gold.

Pierre Mortier (1661-1711)

Pierre (Pieter) Mortier (Leiden, 1661 – Amsterdam, 1711) Dutch publisher, engraver and print seller of French Huguenot descent; best known for his Amsterdam editions of French maps and for Le Neptune François (1693) Mortier is the founder of the family business that later became Covens & Mortier (see the earlier entry). Life Pierre Mortier his grandparents were French refugees who left France around 1625 for Leiden, and his parents settled in Amsterdam in 1661 or 1662. He grew up in Amsterdam, then lived in Paris from 1681 to about 1685, where he entered the book trade and adopted the French form of his name, Pierre, which he kept throughout his career.
Back in Amsterdam, he specialized in French books and kept up his relationships with Parisian publishers. At that time Amsterdam was the international marketplace for books, especially those forbidden by repressive governments.
Much of his business consisted of issuing embellished, high-quality Amsterdam editions of contemporary French maps, generally with the permission of their authors. This was a significant advantage, because most Dutch publishers had by then fallen into reprinting their own outdated work, while French cartographers were producing the most accurate and up-to-date charts anywhere. In 1690 he was granted a privilege (an early form of copyright) to publish French maps in the Dutch lands.
Mortier’s cartographic work culminated in the nautical atlas Le Neptune François, ou Atlas nouveau des cartes marines. The original French Neptune François, by Charles Pène and others, was produced in 1693 for the French navy. Mortier re-engraved the plates in a richly coloured version and added to the titles the words “Levée et Gravée par Ordre du Roy à Paris 1693,” though they were in fact engraved, coloured and published in Amsterdam. He released the first volume in 1693 and followed with an expanded, unofficial Amsterdam supplement, the Suite du Neptune François (c. 1700). The supplement included charts that the French navy’s edition lacked, such as the large chart of the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River. A 1703 world chart showing California as an island appeared in the Mortier edition.
Beside the Neptune he published the "Nouveau Théâtre d’Italie" (1704) reissued Joan Blaeu’s Italian city atlas of 1663.