Plan de la Ville de Dendermonde

Anna Beek’s battle plan of Dendermonde during the War of Spanish Succession.

Though today the city sits within the borders of Belgium, around the time of publication of this map, Dendermonde was part of the Spanish Netherlands and one of many battlegrounds in the ongoing War of Spanish Succession. This plan shows the siege of the city by the Grand Alliance under the Duke of Marlborough, which took place in 1706.

Extensive fortifications and earthworks are shown, but perhaps the most effective defensive mechanism was the deliberate mass flooding, also depicted. A bird’s eye view, lower left, gives a second perspective of the overflowing banks of the Scheldt River and the fortifications of Dendermonde. The plan was one of many published by Anna Beek while she was at the Hague between 1702 and 1709.

Anna van Westerstee Beek was born in the Hague in 1667 and married a prominent local publisher, but her husband deserted her and her seven children in 1693. Granted a divorce by the local magistrate, Anna continued the publishing business and possibly assumed the guild rights of her former husband.

According to the Carlyn Osborn at the Library of Congress, “There was a long tradition of women being intricately involved in the largest map publishing houses (called “ateliers”) in the Low Countries. Women were involved at every level of production: engraving, printing, coloring, and publishing. Ateliers could have a large network of family members working on production at any given time, including wives, daughters, sisters, and widows. It was not uncommon for a widow to take charge of a publishing operation or inherit the guild rights upon the death of a husband, including women from the famed House of Hondius. Because of this, we should not be surprised that Anna Beek ran Chez Beek as Chez Anna Beek following her divorce.”

Though Dutch women weren’t uncommon in cartography, female court artists were much more scarce. In addition to publishing the battle plans featured by the Library of Congress, Beek was also commissioned as a royal colorist to Prince William III of Orange.

References: https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2016/03/anna-beek/