The Special Map of Ukraine is a geographical map of Ukraine and neighbouring countries from the 1650s. It was compiled as a manuscript by the French military engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan (in royal service of the PolishâÂÂLithuanian Commonwealth), and produced as an engraving by the Dutch cartographer Willem Hondius in Gdaà Âsk. The design of the map derived from the fifth version of the first edition of Beauplan's General Map of Ukraine (1 sheet, with a scale of 1:1.800.000), which he first published two years earlier in 1648. However, the Special Map was far larger and more detailed, with 8 sheets and a scale of 1:450.000. According to Serhii Plokhy (2006), "It showed the palatinates of Kyiv, Bratslav, Podilia, Volhynia and, in part, Rus' (Pokutia)."
On 10 March 1645, king Wà Âadysà Âaw IV Vasa granted Beauplan a privilege to publish the "tabula geographica ditionum regni nostri a regno Hungaria usque ad fines Moschoviae sitarum", which would later become known as his Special Map of Ukraine. Yet, Beauplan explained that due to "the great tasks that occupied me during the war" in Ukraine, the publication would be delayed until 1652, because it "obliged me to devote at least eight years to bringing this work to perfection". For reasons that are unclear, the General Map of Ukraine was printed first, before the Special Map the king had commissioned him to make in 1645. Pernal & Essar (1985) suggested that Wà Âadysà Âaw's 1646âÂÂ1647 plans for crusade-style campaign against the Crimean Khanate (an Ottoman vassal) required a map of the lower Dnieper, Crimea and the northwestern Black Sea shores to be produced for immediate military usage.
Beauplan was then fired from service in the Polish Crown Army on 29 March 1647 by hetman Mikoà Âaj Potocki, for unclear reasons. Although this compelled Beauplan to return to France, on his way back he stopped in Gdaà Âsk in 1648, where he still managed to get this more basic General Map (1 sheet) engraved and printed by Hondius. Ultimately, king Wà Âadysà Âaw's plans went nowhere because he died on 20 May 1648, while the Khmelnytsky Uprising of the Zaporizhian Cossacks had broken out in Ukraine on 25 January 1648, requiring the Commonwealth's attention to secure internal stability rather than attempt external adventures.
Therefore, Beauplan finally began readying his special map (8 sheets) for publication in 1650, and he returned to Hondius in Gdaà Âsk that year for that purpose. The fifth version of the General Map of Ukraine shows a fragment of the map separated by the author, divided into 8 squares, with its author's numbering; according to Maria Vavrychyn (2000), these became the basis for Beauplan's Special Map of Ukraine. Three variants of the Special Map of Ukraine are known, one dated 1650, the second a revision of the first in late 1650 or early 1651, and the third dated 30 June 1651.
In the first edition of his book Description of Ukraine (1651), Beauplan three times refers to the attached map, but in fact, there is no map in this edition. In all secondary editions of the Description published by Beauplan in Rouan between 1660 and 1673, only versions of the General Map of Ukraine were included, not the Special Map.