Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan (1600 – 1673) was a French army engineer, architect, and cartographer. From 1630 to 1648 he was a captain in the artillery of the Polish army and was stationed in Ukraine. He oversaw the building of many castles and fortresses (including those at Bar, Brody, and Kremenchuk). Beauplan, one of the most famous 17th-century cartographers, drew the first descriptive map of Ukraine in 1639; in 1654, in Danzig he published a specialized (scale of 1:452,000) and a ‘general’ (scale of 1:1,800,000) map of Ukraine, both engraved by the famous Dutch engraver Willem Hondius. Following their publication in Rouen, France, in 1660, these maps were duplicated many times in various European countries. His book Description of Ukraine was widely known in Europe too.
The map names the realm as ‘Ucrania quae et Terra Cosaccorum‘ — ‘Ukraine, also known as the Land of the Cossacks.’ European mapmakers knew exactly what Ukraine was and who constituted the population of the realm.
Meanwhile, look at ‘Muscovia‘ in the upper right corner. It is nowhere near the center of the region’s culture or politics. The real backyard of European civilization.
Paul of Aleppo described the border between Ukraine and Muscovy and his experience at it >
So, next time someone says ‘Ukraine is an artificial state’ or ‘part of historical Russia,’ – show them this 17th-century map. That is all people should know to debunk Moscow’s claims of some ‘historic russian lands’ nowadays. Another claim of ‘Lenin creating Ukraine’ is debunked by Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan and his book about Ukraine >
How did that country look like to an absolute foreigner exactly in the same years? >
“Gardariki, Ukraine‘ e-book explores the origin of the name Rus and explains why Muscovy-‘Russia’ has no relation to it.
