ANVILLE, JEAN BAPTISTE BOURGUIGNON D' (1697-1782), perhaps the greatest geographical author of the 18th century, was born at Paris on July II 1697. One of D'Anville's main objects was to reform geography by putting an end to the blind copying of older maps, by testing the com monly accepted positions of places through a rigorous examina tion of all the descriptive authority, and by excluding from cartography every name inadequately supported. Vast spaces, which had before been covered with countries and cities, were thus suddenly reduced almost to a blank.
D'Anville's historical method was useful in his 1743 map of Italy, which first indicated numerous errors in the mapping of that country, and was accompanied by a valuable memoir (a novelty in such work) showing in full the sources of the design. A trigonometrical survey which Benedict XIV. soon after had made in the papal States strikingly confirmed the French geog rapher's results. In his later years D'Anville did yeoman service for ancient and mediaeval geography; he mapped afresh all the chief countries of the pre-Christian civilizations (especially Egypt), and wrote Memoire et abrege de geographie ancienne et generale and Etats formes en Europe apres la chute de l'empire romain en occident (1771). His last employment consisted in arranging his collection of maps, plans and geographical materials. It was the most extensive in Europe, and had been purchased by the king, who, however, left him the use of it until his death, which occurred in Jan. 1782, after he had been for two years in a state of mental and bodily decay.
D'Anville's published memoirs and dissertations amounted to 78, and his maps to 211. A complete edition of his works was announced in 18o6 by de Manne in 6 vols. quarto, only two of which had appeared when the editor died in 1832. See Dacier's Eloge de d'Anville (1802). Besides the separate works noticed above, d'Anville's maps executed for Rollin's Histoire ancienne and Histoire romaine, and his Traits des mesures ancienncs et modernes (1769) , deserve special notice.