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Manuscript Map of Dagua River Region, Colombia
This beautiful pen-and-ink and watercolor map shows the Dagua River and the town of Sombrerillo in what was then the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Grenada. The river empties into the Pacific Ocean near the present-day city of Buenaventura, Colombia. Sombrerillo was a “free town” populated by former slaves who had gained their freedom from the lowland mines and the highland haciendas of the region. The map is oriented with north at the bottom.
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Library of Congress
Map of the World
This late 18th-century Latin map of the world by the Augsburg map publisher Tobias Lotter (1717-77) is based on an earlier map by the French cartographer Guillaume de l'Isle (1675-1726). De l'Isle was among the group of French cartographers who wrested mapmaking preeminence from the Dutch in the late 17th century. De l’Isle was a child prodigy, having drawn his first map at age nine. He was trained in history and geography, as well as in mathematics and astronomy. He drew extensively on classical Arabic and Persian ...
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National Library of Brazil
A Chart of the Gulf Stream
This map, from the Peter Force Map Collection at the Library of Congress, was created by the Philadelphia engraver James Poupard. It was the third in a series featuring a chart of the Gulf Stream. The latter was well known to Spanish ship captains, who relied on it to sail from the Americas to the Iberian Peninsula, but there were no universal charts or maps due to Spanish secrecy. This map originally was sketched by Timothy Folger, a Nantucket fisherman and a cousin of Benjamin Franklin, who conceived the map ...
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Library of Congress
A General Chart of the West Indies: With Additions from the Latest Navigators
Captain Joseph Smith Speer was an English mariner who served 21 years on the Mosquito (Miskito) Coast in what is now Nicaragua. He later created detailed maps of the West Indies based on his first-hand knowledge of the region. In 1766 he published The West-India Pilot containing 13 maps, followed by an enlarged edition with 26 maps in 1771. A General Chart of the West Indies, shown here, is a large, detailed map (71 by 117 centimeters). It is based on an earlier map from 1774, “with Additions from the ...
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Library of Congress
A Journal of Captain Cook's Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and in Quest of a North-West Passage Between Asia & America, Performed in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, and 1779
The American explorer and adventurer John Ledyard was born in Groton, Connecticut, in 1751. After studying briefly at Dartmouth College, he went to sea as a common sailor. He was forced to join the British Navy, and from June 1776 to October 1780 was a marine on Captain James Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific. This book recounts his observations of Alaska, Kamchatka, southern China, and the islands of the South Pacific. Ledyard later conceived of a plan to cross Russia, continue across the Bering Strait to Alaska, and ...
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Library of Congress
A New Map of Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton Island: With the Adjacent Parts of New England and Canada, Composed from a Great Number of Actual Surveys; and Other Materials Regulated by Many New Astronomical Observations of the Longitude as Well as Latitude
Thomas Jefferys (1710-71) was a royal geographer to King George III and a London publisher of maps. He is well known for his maps of North America, produced to meet commercial demand, but also to support British territorial claims against the French. The period from 1748-63 saw fierce global competition between England and France, culminating in the Seven Years' War, which produced a high demand for maps of the contested territories. This map presents Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island in the wake of the “great upheaval,” when the British ...
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Library of Congress
A Plan of the Rosalij Compy. Estates, the Property of His Excelly. Charles O'Harra, the Honble. Leiut. Gov. Will. Stuart, James Clarke & Rob. & Phill.
France and Britain vied for control of Dominica for many years. In 1763, the British gained possession of the island. This detailed map shows British-owned estates and a plantation on the Atlantic side of the island. Details on the map include individual buildings and structures, roads, sections of the plantation identified by number, administrative divisions of the estates identified by letters, streams, pictorial representations of vegetation and relief, the coastline and coastal features, and a vignette of ships in the harbor. The map also includes a keyed legend listing the ...
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Library of Congress
Map of the Straits of Magellan and Part of the Land of Fire, Prepared in 1786
This composite map of the 1785-86 scientific expedition to the Strait of Magellan under the command of Antonio de Córdoba (1740?-1811) represents the first comprehensive study of the region. The map includes references to ports, bays, channels, and other natural features, a keyed legend, and a detailed explanation and notes. Córdoba was a commander (teniente general) in the Spanish Navy who participated in various battles, campaigns, and scientific expeditions throughout the Spanish Empire and beyond. These activities took him to Havana in 1761, Algiers in 1767, Peru, Chile, and ...
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Map of Barbary, Nigritia and Guinea
Jan Barend Elwe was a publisher and seller of maps who was active in Amsterdam in the period between 1777 and 1815. He is best known for his pocket atlases of the Netherlands (1786) and of Germany (1791). Many of Elwe’s publications were reprints of earlier maps by well-known European cartographers. He reissued several maps by the great French mapmaker Guillaume de l’Isle, including this 1792 map of West and North Africa, which de l’Isle first published in 1707.
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Library of Congress
Map of Quantong Province or Lyau-tong and of the Kingdom of Kau-li or Korea: For the Universal History of a Society of Men of Letters
This 1745 map of Korea was prepared for a universal history published in France in the 18th century. Based on an earlier English map, it is mainly in French but includes some names in German, e.g., “Das gelbe Meer” for the Yellow Sea. The notation at the bottom indicates that the prime meridian is set at Ferro Island, otherwise known as El Hierro, the southwestern-most of the Canary Islands. In his Geographia, the ancient astronomer and geographer Ptolemy (87-150) specified that maps should use coordinates stated in degrees, with ...
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Library of Congress
Map of the Provinces of Nicaragua and Costa Rica
Jacques Bellin (1703-72) was a prolific cartographer attached to the French Marine Office. In 1764, he published Le Petit Atlas Maritime (Small maritime atlas), a work in five volumes containing 581 maps. Nicaragua and Costa Rica, shown in this map from the second volume of the atlas, were at the time provinces of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, part of the Spanish Empire. The left side of the image shows the title page of Bellin’s atlas. Nicaragua and Costa Rica both declared independence from Spain in 1821.
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Library of Congress
Chart of the Galapagos: Surveyed in the Merchant-Ship Rattler and Drawn by Captain James Colnett of the Royal Navy in 1793, 1794 ; Engraved by T. Foot
In 1793, Captain James Colnett of the Royal Navy in the merchant ship Rattler undertook a survey of the Galapagos Islands. Colnett was on an extended voyage to the Pacific that he chronicled in a book published in 1798 under the lengthy title A voyage to the south Atlantic and round cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean, for the purpose of extending the spermaceti whale fisheries, and other objects of commerce, by ascertaining the ports, bays, harbours, and anchoring births in certain islands and coasts in those seas at which ...
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Library of Congress
Coast of Cuba from Cape of San Antonio to the Bay of Cardenas
This Spanish map of a portion of the north coast of Cuba shows the coastline, coastal features, soundings, navigational hazards, a fortification, and settlements. It includes a decorative wind rose and five coastal profile views. The map is oriented with south at the top. It is from the Real Escuela de Navegación in Cadiz, Spain, and was acquired by the Library of Congress from the Maggs Brothers, London.
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Library of Congress
General Map of Irkutsk Province, Self-Compiled in Irkutsk, Yakutsk, and Udinsk Provinces
This multi-colored, hand-colored map of eastern Siberia shows the state of geographic knowledge at the beginning of the last quarter of the 18th century. The geographic grid and the mapping of the rivers are well-executed. Sakhalin Island is shown, but is poorly mapped. The work is by Johann Treskot (1721-86), a cartographer at the Geographical Department of the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, who compiled many of the maps published by the academy from the 1740s to the 1780s.
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Russian State Library
Gulzar Calligraphic Panel
This calligraphic panel executed in black and red on a white ground decorated in gold contains a number of prayers (du'a's) directed to God, the Prophet Muhammad, and his son-in-law 'Ali. The letters of the larger words are executed in nasta'liq script and are filled with decorative motifs, animals, and human figures. This style of script, filled with various motifs, is called gulzar, which literally means 'rose garden' or 'full of flowers.' It usually is applied to the interior of inscriptions executed in nasta'liq, such as ...
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Library of Congress
His Excellency: George Washington Esq: L.L.D. Late Commander in Chief of the Armies of the U.S. of America and President of the Convention of 1787
In 1787, the confederation of the 13 American states was descending into disarray. The coffers were empty, New York and New Jersey were in a dispute over duties charged on goods crossing state lines, farmers in Massachusetts were rebelling, and Spain and Britain were encroaching on American territories in the west. The Federal Convention was called to address the problems of governing the young republic under the existing Articles of Confederation. The convention responded by framing the document that became the United States Constitution. The convention delegates elected George Washington ...
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Declaration of Independence. In Congress, July 4, 1776, a Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled.
This document is the first printed version of the American Declaration of Independence. On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution urging Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, to declare independence from Great Britain. Four days later, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston were appointed as a committee to draft a declaration of independence. The committee’s draft was read in Congress on June 28. On July 4, Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, containing a list of grievances against the British ...
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Library of Congress
The Precious Book on Noteworthy Dates
This short work, entitled Kitāb al-yawāqīt fī ma‘rifat al-mawāqīt, and copied by an anonymous scribe in Shawwāl in June-July 1775 (AH 1168), is attributed to Ḥusayn (or Ḥasan) b. Zayd b. ‘Alī al-Jaḥḥāf, who is said to have dedicated it to Abū ‘Alī Manṣūr al-Ḥākim bi Amr-Allāh, the sixth Fāṭimid ruler (died 996). The manuscript lists the 12 months of the year, each on one sheet, in the form of an almanac. The last page is a one-page guide to the interpretation of dreams, reportedly prepared at the behest ...
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National Library and Archives of Egypt
A Summary View of the Rights of British America: Set Forth in Some Resolutions Intended for the Inspection of the Present Delegates of the People of Virginia, Now in Convention / by a Native, and Member of the House of Burgesses
This pamphlet is Thomas Jefferson’s personal copy of A Summary View of the Rights of British America, which he originally drafted in July 1774 as a set of instructions for the Virginia delegates to the first Continental Congress. Jefferson argued that the British Parliament had no rights to govern the colonies, which he claimed had been independent since their founding. He also described the usurpations of power and deviations from law committed by King George III and Parliament. Jefferson was not present in the Virginia House when his draft ...
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Library of Congress
Geographical Game of the French Republic
J.N. Mauborgne, a former professor of geography in Paris, created this “geographical game of the French Republic” in honor of the government of the National Convention during the French Revolution. Mauborgne’s game involves traveling around republican France, which was divided into 83 “departments,” the new unit of territorial administration that the Revolution introduced to replace the much larger historical provinces. Each space on the map shows a different department with its departmental capital, or chef-lieu. Players move counter-clockwise about the board from department to department, ending on the ...
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Library of Congress
Map of the New Discoveries in the Eastern Ocean
This Russian map of 1781 depicts parts of eastern Siberia and the northwestern part of the North American continent, including places reached by the Russians Mikhail Gvozdev and Ivan Sind, the English explorer Captain James Cook, and others. In 1732, the expedition led by Gvozdev and the navigator Ivan Fedorov crossed the Bering Strait between Asia and America, discovered the Diomede Islands, and approached Alaska in the vicinity of Cape Prince of Wales. The expedition landed on the shore of the North American mainland, marked on the map as the ...
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National Library of Russia
Map Presenting the Discoveries of Russian Navigators in the Pacific Ocean, as Well as Those of Captain Cook
This 1787 map shows the voyages of the leading Russian explorers of the North Pacific: Bering, Chirikov, Krenitsyn, Shpanberg, Walton, Shel'ting, and Petushkov. It also shows the 1778-79 voyage of British Captain James Cook. The route of each voyage is depicted in great detail, with ship locations plotted by the day. Other details on the map include administrative borders, population centers, Chukchi dwellings, and impassable ice. The inset map is of Kodiak Island, Alaska, denoted here by its Russian name of Kykhtak.
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National Library of Russia
A Complete Portrayal of the Earth
This 1795 impression of a woodcut based on Oronce Fine’s 1534 heart-shaped map of the world is attributed to a cartographer from Tunis named Hajji Ahmad. At first glance, the map’s accompanying Ottoman Turkish text appears to be a captivating, first-person account of Hajji Ahmad’s remarkable odyssey across the Mediterranean. Upon closer inspection, cartography scholars have questioned the map’s authenticity and authorship. The text contains errors, and European sources such as Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s Delle Navigationi et Viaggi (Travels and voyages) appear to have influenced ...
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Library of Congress
Palestine, Tribes, and Jerusalem
Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782) was one of the most important French geographers of the 18th century. He worked during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. D’Anville’s approach to geography was geometric; he believed that man’s presence was worthy of acknowledgement only insofar as it helped the cartographer to establish the boundaries of a place. He focused on fidelity to what was documented about the territory in question using knowledge gleaned from travel journals, historical accounts, old maps, poems, and more. D’Anville was ...
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Library of Congress
Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Tobias Conrad Lotter (1717-77) was a publisher of maps in Augsburg, Germany. He inherited the family mapmaking business from his father-in-law, Matthias Seutter. Lotter published atlases and numerous sheet maps, including this 1770 Latin map of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At the height of its power in the 14th-16th centuries, the Grand Duchy comprised the territories of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, and western Ukraine. In the late 16th century, Lithuania came under the increasing influence of Poland. In 1569 the two countries united to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. As shown ...
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Library of Congress
Map of the Empire of Germany: Including All the States Comprehended Under that Name with the Kingdom of Prussia
Produced on the eve of the Industrial and French revolutions, this 1782 map by Louis Delarochette represents the German Empire nearly a century before Otto von Bismarck’s unification of the country. It is part of Thomas Kitchen’s General Atlas, originally created by Louis Stanislas d'Arcy Delarochette and purportedly designed to show the entire universe. Kitchen, whose name was also frequently spelled “Kitchin,” was a London-based cartographer and engraver of maps of England, greater Europe, and parts of the British Empire who was employed as a senior hydrographer ...
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Library of Congress
Modern Asia
John Wilkes was a London publisher best known for his Encyclopaedia Londinensis; or, universal dictionary of arts, sciences, and literature (1801-28). Wilkes frequently worked with Samuel John Neele, the engraver of this hand-colored map of “modern Asia.” The map reflects late 18th-century European geographic conceptions and terminology. India is referred to as “Hindoostan,” while much of the interior is shown as comprised of “Western Tartary” and “Chinese Tartary.” “Tartary” was a designation applied by Europeans to those parts of Asia inhabited by nomadic Turkic and Mongol peoples. This map shows ...
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Library of Congress
Map Showing the Presumed Headwaters of the Das Velhas River and Part of the Captaincy of Minas Gerais
This late-18th century hand-drawn map shows the Das Velhas River, one of the tributaries of the São Francisco River in southern Brazil that flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Gold was discovered on its banks in 1698-99.
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National Library of Brazil
The Western part of New France, or Canada, Done by Mr. Bellin, Royal Marine Engineer, in Order to Further Understanding of Present-Day Political Matters in America
This detailed map of the Great Lakes region of western “New France” by Jacques Nicolas Bellin was published by the Heirs of Homan in 1755, shortly before the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, the conflict that resulted in the transfer of New France to British hands. Bellin was just one representative of a greater movement by French royal and military cartographers in the 18th century to map New France using the knowledge possessed by Native Americans. This map shows details not only of the Canadian waterways, but also of ...
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Library of Congress
Map of the Bay of Rio de Janeiro
Jacques Bellin (1703-72) was a prolific cartographer attached to the French Marine Office. His sea atlases reflected the careful mapping of bays, seas, and harbors that characterized 18th-century French naval cartography. In 1764, he published Le Petit Atlas Maritime, a work in five volumes, containing 581 maps. This map, from the second volume of the atlas, shows the Bay of Rio de Janeiro and its important natural harbor.
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National Library of Brazil
Map of the Bay of Concepción of Chile
This pen-and-ink and watercolor map of the Bahía de Concepción is based on an original prepared by Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa in 1744 during one of their scientific expeditions to South America, with extensive additions and revisions made in the early 1780s. It shows the location of the old city of Concepción and its new location further from the sea after the city was rebuilt following the devastating earthquake of 1751. The map is oriented with north at the lower left. Latitude and the longitude are set in ...
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Library of Congress
Map of the Uruguay River from Yapeyu to the Farm of Sn. Gregorio
This Spanish map of the Río Uruguay from Estancia San Gregorio to Yapeyu was prepared by Joseph Varela y Ulloa (1739-94), the commander of the Spanish party of the joint Spanish-Portuguese boundary commission that surveyed the Uruguay and Paraguay river basins between 1784 and 1788. The survey took place after the signing, in October 1777, of the First Treaty of San Ildefonso between Spain and Portugal, which settled the outstanding border disputes between the two empires in the region of the Rio de la Plata. The map shows the route ...
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Library of Congress
Iconographic Plan of Mexico City Showing the General Layout of its Pleasant and Beautiful Streets: As well as the repair and elimination of the negative features of the various neighborhoods, with their myriad hidden places, deserted alleyways, ruins and the negligent residents who cause them, in spite of all the efforts of the officers of public law and order under the command of His Excellency Count Revilla Gigedo, in the administration of Metropolitan Mayor Don Ignacio Castera
This map of Mexico City was made to support an early effort at urban improvement carried out by Viceroy Juan Vicente Güemes Pacheco de Padilla Revillagigedo (1740-99), who served as the 52nd viceroy of New Spain in the period from 1789 to 1794. During his tenure, this enlightened official undertook a massive overhaul of the social, financial, and administrative organization of New Spain. He ordered the first census, reorganized the militia, strengthened frontier garrisons, and promoted further exploration of the Pacific coast. This map reflects the viceroy's interest in ...
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Library of Congress
The Attack of Manilla, October 1762
The Seven Years' War (1756-63) was a world-wide conflict between Britain and France that also involved Spain as an ally of France. In 1762, the British sent Admiral William Draper, with an expeditionary force of some 2,000 European and Indian (Sepoy) soldiers, to attack Manila in the Spanish colony of the Philippines. The Spanish offered little opposition, and on October 2, 1762, the acting governor-general, Archbishop Manuel Antonio Rojo, surrendered the city. The British occupation lasted until 1764, when the Philippines reverted to Spanish control as part of the ...
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Library of Congress
The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street, Boston, on March 5th 1770 by a Party of the 29th Regiment
In Boston in the late 1760s, the stirrings of what became the American Revolution began as residents grew angry about the heavy taxation to which they were subjected. With the Townshend Acts of 1767, the British placed taxes on imported goods, including glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. To enforce the acts, they imposed a heavy military presence on the Massachusetts colonists that exacerbated tensions between the local populace and representatives of the crown. On March 5, 1770, British sentries guarding the Boston Customs House were surrounded by jeering Bostonians ...
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Library of Congress
View of Quebec, Capital of Canada
This illustrated map, from the Rochambeau Collection of the Library of Congress, presents a striking panorama of the City of Quebec during its last years as the capital of New France, the French colony of Canada. Drawn in 1755 by Royal Geographer Georges-Louis Le Rouge, the map identifies ten key sites throughout the city. Located on the St. Lawrence River, Quebec was an administrative, military, and commercial hub, as well as a religious center that was home to a cathedral, bishop’s palace, seminary, and Jesuit mission. Originally established in ...
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Library of Congress
Instructions and Travel Diary that Governor Francisco Joze de Lacerda e Almeida Wrote about His Travel to the Center of Africa, Going to the River of Sena, in the Year of 1798
This manuscript diary by the Brazilian mathematician, geographer, and explorer Francisco José de Lacerda e Almeida (1750-98) describes Almeida’s journey into the interior of southern Africa in 1798. Almeida was born in Brazil, studied at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, and rose to the position of royal astronomer. In 1780, he returned to Brazil as part of a commission established to determine the borders between Spanish and Portuguese territories in South America under the recently concluded Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777). He spent ten years in Brazil, where ...
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National Library of Brazil
Topographic Map of De Centa Valley
This clear and beautifully executed late 18th century Spanish map of the vicinity of Oran in the extreme north of Argentina was intended to promote settlement in this region. The map was prepared at the behest of Ramón Garcia de Leon y Pizarro, Governor and Captain General of the Province of Salta, who founded Oran in August 1794, possibly as an outpost to strengthen Spanish territorial claims along the then Spanish-Portuguese frontier. The map shows the planned and partially settled community of Oran, other settlements, a sugar plantation, individual land ...
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Library of Congress
The Austrian Circle
The Holy Roman Empire (962-1806) was organized, beginning in the early 1500s, into ten Imperial Circles, each of which had its own diet or parliament, and which had certain responsibilities with regard to defense, tax collection, and other functions. (Some territories of the empire, for example, Bohemia and parts of Italy, were not grouped in circles.) This late-18th century French map shows the Austrian Circle, which largely coincided with those lands ruled by the House of Habsburg from Vienna. In addition to Austria proper, the Austrian Circle included parts of ...
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Library of Congress
History of Armenia
Mik’ayel Ch’amch’yants’ was born in Istanbul in 1738. After training and working as a jeweler in his native city, in 1762 he joined the Armenian Catholic Mekhitarist order at the St. Lazar Monastery in Venice. Founded by Abbott Mekhitar (1676–1749) in 1700, the Mekhitarists were dedicated to the religious, cultural, and literary revival of Armenia, which at the time was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Ch’amch’yants’ was appointed instructor in the Armenian language at St. Lazar in 1774, and in 1784 he ...
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Library of Congress
An Album of the Miao Minority
This book contains 41 illustrations, with texts on the left and illustrations on the right. The painting is meticulous, the engraving and drawing lively, the people lifelike, and the colors rich, retaining their freshness after more than 200 years. The illustrations show that in the region depicted, the Miao, Lao, and Han Chinese lived in mixed communities and had customs that were quite different from those in other places in China. The illustrations, organized by category, give a picture of the area and the people's way of life in ...
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Library of Congress
Imperial Comments Concerning Illustrations of the Cotton Industry
This book is comprised of paintings by Fang Guancheng, with illustrations and text facing each other. The text is the same as in Fang’s memorial (on the cotton industry); the illustrations are slightly different. The first volume contains eight pictures, from “Planting” to “Ginning;” the second volume contains another eight pictures, from “Fluffing the Cotton” to “Bleaching and Dyeing.”
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Library of Congress