Beauplan, Guillaume

Born circa 1600; died Dec. 6, 1673. French engineer.

Between 1630 and 1648, Beauplan served in the Polish Army. He directed the construction of fortresses in the southern Ukraine. He explored almost all of the boundaries of Poland in his time, as well as the Dnieper River and its rapids, and he compiled geographic maps that were published in 1648–50 (reprinted by V. A. Kordt in Materials on the History of Russian Cartography, issues 1–2,1899–1910). In 1650, after returning to France, Beauplan published the book A Description of the Ukraine, which contains interesting information about the struggle of the Ukrainian people in the first half of the 17th century against the yoke of the Polish gentry and about the population, geography, and ethnology of the Ukraine, Poland, and the Crimea.