The Dutch colonial map collection of the Royal Tropical Institute consists of ca. 11,500 map sheets and 293 atlases, mainly concerning the Dutch East Indies. (About 700 map sheets concern Suriname and 300 map sheets the Netherlands Antilles.)

For a large part, the collection is based on donations. An important gift was a collection of ca. 2.600 map sheets of the Topographical Service (Topografische Dienst) at Weltevreden (near Batavia) in 1927. In 1947 a collection of 1.543 map sheets and 13 terrain studies of the allied forces from the period 1942-1945 was donated by Hubertus Johannes van Mook, lieutenant-governor-general of the Dutch East Indies. In 1949, just before the transfer of sovereignty, a part of the map archive of the Geographical Institute of the Topographical Service in Batavia was transferred to the Netherlands by its director Ferdinand Jan Ormeling sr. About half of that collection was placed at the Royal Tropical Institute. Among the top pieces of the collection the manuscript example of the 8-sheet map of the Dutch East Indies by Gijsbert Franco baron Von Derfelden van Hinderstein (1839) and the 27 manuscript sheets of the map of Suriname by Johan François Adriaan Cateau van Rosevelt (1860-1879) can be counted. Special atlases are the non-published Atlas van de wereld naar de laatste ontdekkingen of Jacob Kuyper (1858) and a loose-leaf series of Isaac Tirion's Nieuwe en beknopte hand-atlas (1731-1769).