![ROBERT DE VAUGONDY, Gilles (1696-1766). Autograph manuscript, 'Reponse analitique au memoire du Sr. Buache par le Sr. Robert de Vaugondy Geog. ord. du Roi Auteur du nouvel Atlas du Sr. Boudet Libraire imprimeur du Roi' beside an autograph copy of Buache's 'Memoire sur le nouvel atlas du Sr. Boudet Libraire. fevrier 1751 [i.e. 1752]', n.p. [Paris], n.d. [1752], approximately 10 pages, folio, on bifolia (slight wear to inner corners, affecting two words).](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2000/CKS/2000_CKS_06346_0040_000(011624).jpg?w=1)
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ROBERT DE VAUGONDY, Gilles (1696-1766). Autograph manuscript, 'Reponse analitique au memoire du Sr. Buache par le Sr. Robert de Vaugondy Geog. ord. du Roi Auteur du nouvel Atlas du Sr. Boudet Libraire imprimeur du Roi' beside an autograph copy of Buache's 'Memoire sur le nouvel atlas du Sr. Boudet Libraire. fevrier 1751 [i.e. 1752]', n.p. [Paris], n.d. [1752], approximately 10 pages, folio, on bifolia (slight wear to inner corners, affecting two words).
A fascinating 'salvo' in a long-running cartographical war. Vaugondy's manuscript responds point by point to Buache's attack on his Atlas Universel, rebutting amongst other criticisms the charges that it was improper for a bookseller such as Boudet to be usurping the roles of the official géographes in issuing an atlas, that a new complete atlas was unnecessary, that Vaugondy's maps contained numerous errors, and in short, as Vaugondy summarises, that he and his son and assistant, Didier, are 'ignoramuses, poor copyists, people who work without system, who impose on the public, who dishonour the nation and who steal the work of our colleagues'. Vaugondy ends by proposing a test of knowledge between his son and Buache to demonstrate conclusively who is the better géographe.
The hostility between Philippe Buache de la Neuville, the premier géographe du roi, and Gilles and Didier Robert de Vaugondy seems to have originated with legal action taken by Buache against Vaugondy's publisher and bookseller Antoine Boudet in 1748, charging him with plagiarising the work of Buache's father-in-law, the cartographer Guillaume Delisle. A number of Buache's criticisms of the new enterprise on this occasion were in fact justified - as that there were errors in the map of France along the Paris meridian, and that Perpignan and Bayonne are placed too close together. Others proved more controversial, such as that the map of Russia, which the Vaugondys had given without a scale, as being impossible at such a northerly projection, could easily bear one, whereas the projection of South America, given with a scale, could not (Mary Sponberg Pedley, Bel et Utile, The Work of the Robert de Vaugondy family of mapmakers, 1992, p.52 ff). The animosity peaked the next year with a furious public row over Admiral de la Fuente's spurious discoveries in North-West America in 1753, and simmered on over the following decades, being continued after Buache's death by his nephew and successor as premier géographe, Jean Nicolas.
A fascinating 'salvo' in a long-running cartographical war. Vaugondy's manuscript responds point by point to Buache's attack on his Atlas Universel, rebutting amongst other criticisms the charges that it was improper for a bookseller such as Boudet to be usurping the roles of the official géographes in issuing an atlas, that a new complete atlas was unnecessary, that Vaugondy's maps contained numerous errors, and in short, as Vaugondy summarises, that he and his son and assistant, Didier, are 'ignoramuses, poor copyists, people who work without system, who impose on the public, who dishonour the nation and who steal the work of our colleagues'. Vaugondy ends by proposing a test of knowledge between his son and Buache to demonstrate conclusively who is the better géographe.
The hostility between Philippe Buache de la Neuville, the premier géographe du roi, and Gilles and Didier Robert de Vaugondy seems to have originated with legal action taken by Buache against Vaugondy's publisher and bookseller Antoine Boudet in 1748, charging him with plagiarising the work of Buache's father-in-law, the cartographer Guillaume Delisle. A number of Buache's criticisms of the new enterprise on this occasion were in fact justified - as that there were errors in the map of France along the Paris meridian, and that Perpignan and Bayonne are placed too close together. Others proved more controversial, such as that the map of Russia, which the Vaugondys had given without a scale, as being impossible at such a northerly projection, could easily bear one, whereas the projection of South America, given with a scale, could not (Mary Sponberg Pedley, Bel et Utile, The Work of the Robert de Vaugondy family of mapmakers, 1992, p.52 ff). The animosity peaked the next year with a furious public row over Admiral de la Fuente's spurious discoveries in North-West America in 1753, and simmered on over the following decades, being continued after Buache's death by his nephew and successor as premier géographe, Jean Nicolas.
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