Articles on maps or groups of maps

Abstract

Summary A collection of 48 maps (13 manuscript and 35 printed), bound into a volume about the year 1683 when William Blathwayt was secretary to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, is now in the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. The maps cover all areas of British overseas interest in the second half of the seventeenth century, not only the North American colonies but also South America, Africa, and a single point in Asia ‐ Bombay. The printed maps and the manuscripts are of many kinds and found their way to the Plantations Office from a gTeat variety of sources. The paper discusses some of the problems involved in annotating these maps for a facsimile publication of the atlas. Only eleven of the maps carry dates, and only three of the thirteen manuscripts are signed. It has been possible, however, in a good many cases to place them in the context of specific deliberations and actions of the Lords of Trade, thus making evident the significance of the maps as documents for the historian of the colonies and of the development of the British Empire in the latter half of the seventeenth century. One example is discussed: a map of the island of Tobago, which is shown to have been an element in an unsuccessful colonial promotion scheme of the early 1680's and which throws some new light on the project, its timing, and its organizers.

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