Ostensibly, a map of Tartary, or the Realms of the Great Khan, based on Abraham Ortelius's map of 1570, the map records the dramatic change in economic and national dynamics that came over a century, from the traditional use of the Silk Road to convey goods from Cathay and the East to opening of a sea route via South Africa in 1498 to bypass Islamic / Italian control of the traditional routes. The Portuguese directly controlled this route to India and, through a series of forts and factories between India and Nagasaki in Japan, by 1571 controlled what was the first global empire.

The mapmaker
Jodocus Hondius I (1563–1612) established the Hondius publishing house in Amsterdam, the center of cartographic production in the late sixteenth century. Between approximately 1584 to 1593 he lived and worked in London. Whilst there, he took a particular interest in Drake's voyages and the man himself, with several engravings of the explorer attributed to him.
Hondius purchased many copperplates by Gerard Mercator (1512–94) in July of 1604, probably bought at Leiden at the auction of Mercator's library, then in the possession of his grandson, Gerard Mercator, Jr. Hondius built a successful publishing career from his own Mercator-Hondius atlas, as 'Gerardi Mercatoris Atlas Sive Cosmographicae' in 1606 with 37 newly engraved maps, taking the total to 144. A revised text was written by Petrus Montanus. In 1609 a French edition was published, with by now, 147 maps.
After Jodocus Hondius I's death in 1612, his widow, Jodocus Hondius II and his brother, Henricus Hondius II (1597–1651), continued publishing atlases under his name until 1620.