Tasman lands in Van Dieman's Land

Historical Context Essay

Marion Spies (Bergische Universität-GHS Wuppertal)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 9.1.1: Australian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Susan Kossew (Monash University)

Domains

Exploration

Dates

Date of occurrence 1642-11-24

Places

Australia (Location)

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

The Dutch mariner and explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman (?1603-1659) undertook between 1633 and 1649 numerous trading and military voyages for the Dutch East India Company. Two of these expeditions, in 1642 and 1644, resulted in important discoveries about Australia. His journal of his 1642 voyage to Van Diemen’s Land and New Zealand was first published in England in 1694. (Van Diemen’s Land was the name originally given by Tasman to the land now called Tasmania.) There have been numerous biographies of Tasman and he has also been the subject of poems; the most well-known of the latter is Australian poet R. D. Fitzgerald’s “Heemskerck Shoals” (1949).

Tasman has often been accused of sailing right round Australia without finding it. This is not quite accurate. As Fitzgerald

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

448 words

Citation: Spies, Marion. "Tasman lands in Van Dieman's Land". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 April 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1090, accessed 20 April 2024.]

Save this article