A view of Dejima, an artificial island created near Nagasaki to contain Dutch traders in Japan. Nagasaki was the only harbour open to European traders during the sakoku period. The view comes from an Italian edition of Thomas Salmon’s ‘Modern History, or the Present State of all Nations’, first published in English in London in 1739. The ‘Modern History’ was Salmon’s best known work, and was republished, pirated and translated into multiple languages.

Thomas Salmon (1697-1757) was a writer specialising in history and geography. He ran a coffee house in Cambridge, before moving to London; he had also served onboard ships in the East and West Indies. He was part of the crew during Admiral George Anson’s 1739-40 circumnavigation of the world.