Paraquariae Provinciae Soc. Jesu cum adiacentibus novissima descriptio post iterata peregrinationes & plures observationes Patrum Missionariorum [...].

Engr., printed on 2 joined sheets, 75,5 x 54 cm, contemp. hand-coloured. Very neat copy.

Very rare copy of Juan Francisco d'Avila's map of the Jesuit province of Paraguay and its surrounding regions. It was the most comprehensive map of the Río de la Plata estuary up to that point and a source map for the 18th-c. cartography of the region, covering present-day Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia and large areas of Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina. Particularly interesting for showing the Rio de la Plata missions or Jesuit Reductions, that were in fact rather autonomous and economically successful settlements amongst the Guaraní peoples where the natives were afforded protection from enslavement and the forced labour of encomiendas. Guaraní militias for the defense of the Reductions were set up which fought effectively against the Portuguese colonists. This Petroschi edition follows the 1756 Guaraní War against the joint Spanish-Portuguese forces, before the Jesuits being expelled from the Guaraní missions and from the Spanish realm in 1767. The Reductions were romanticised as ideal communities of noble savages, and were praised as such by Montesquieu and even by Rousseau.
Ref. "Maps of the Jesuit Mission in Spanish America, 18th Century." Imago Mundi 15 (1960): 114-18. - Furlong, S.J. - Cartografía Jesuítica del Rio de la Plata, 23n.