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Sovereignty “More Plainly Described”: Early English Maps of North America, 1580–1625

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Ken MacMillan
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , October 2003 , pp. 413 - 447
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2003

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References

1 Harley, J. B., “Meaning and Ambiguity in Tudor Cartography,” in English Map-Making 1500–1650, ed. Tyacke, Sarah (London, 1983), pp. 22–45 quotation on p. 22Google Scholar. Many of Harley's cartographical writings have been collected in Harley, J. B., The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore, 2001)Google Scholar. Also see the bibliography compiled by Matthew H. Edney in that volume, pp. 282–96.

2 Harley, J. B. and Woodward, David, “Concluding Remarks,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 1, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago, 1987), p. 506Google Scholar.

3 See Akerman, James, “The Structuring of Political Territory in Early Printed Atlases,” Imago Mundi 47 (1995): 138–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barber, Peter, “Maps and Monarchs in Europe, 1500–1800,” in Royal and Republicanism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Oresko, Robert et al. (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 75–124Google Scholar; Biggs, Michael, “Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State Formation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (1999): 374–405CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Short, John Rennie, Representing the Republic: Mapping the United States 1600–1900 (London, 2001), pp. 9–75Google Scholar; Turnbull, David, Masons, Tricksters, and Cartographers (Amsterdam, 2000), chap. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wintle, Michael, “Renaissance Maps and the Construction of the Idea of Europe,” Journal of Historical Geography 25 (1999): 137–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wood, Denis, The Power of Maps (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

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5 For example, Cumming, William P., “Early Maps of the Chesapeake Bay Area: Their Relation to Settlement and Society,” in Early Maryland in a Wider World, ed. Quinn, D. B. (Detroit, 1982), pp. 267–310Google Scholar; Kelly, James E. Jr., “Distortions on Sixteenth-Century Maps of America,” Cartographica 32 (1995): 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Quinn, D. B., “Artists and Illustrators in Early Mapping of North America,” in his Explorers and Colonies: America, 1500–1625 (London, 1990), pp. 62–66Google Scholar, and “The Early Cartography of Maine in the Setting of Early European Exploration of New England and the Maritimes,” in his European Approaches to North America, 1450–1640 (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 41–67Google Scholar.

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8 Short, Representing the Republic, p. 54.

9 Recent historians have seen similar aspects of the power of mapping in imperial settings. See, e.g., Burnett, D. Graham, Masters of All They Surveyed: Exploration, Geography, and a British El Dorado (Chicago, 2000)Google Scholar; Craib, Raymond B., “Cartography and Power in the Conquest and Creation of New Spain,” Latin American Research Review 35 (2000): 7–36Google Scholar; Reid, John G., “The Conquest of ‘Nova Scotia’: Cartographic Imperialism and the Echoes of a Scottish Past,” in Nation and Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas, 1600–1800, ed. Landsman, Ned C. (London, 2001), pp. 39–59Google Scholar.

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14 For example, Apian, Peter, Charte Cosmographique (Venice, 1553)Google Scholar, Gastaldi, Giacomo, Universale Novo (Venice, 1548)Google Scholar, and Münster, Sebastian, Nova Insulae XXVI Nova Tabula (Basle, 1552)Google Scholar share many similarities with these early English maps.

15 Gilbert's map could have been drawn as early as 1566, predating Mercator's world map, but it is still more rudimentary than contemporary continental maps.

16 Cormack, Charting an Empire, chaps. 3 and 5; Tyacke, English Map-Making; Harvey, P. D. A., Maps in Tudor England (Chicago, 1993)Google Scholar; Skelton, R. A. and Harvey, P. D. A., eds., Local Maps and Plans from Medieval England (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; Delano-Smith, Catherine, “Map Ownership in Sixteenth-Century Cambridge: The Evidence of Probate Inventories,” Imago Mundi 47 (1995): 67–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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18 British Library (BL), Cotton MS Augustus I.i.1.

19 John Dee, “Of Famous and Rich Discoveries [1577],” BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C.vii, fols. 26–269; “Brytanici Imperii Limites [1577–78],” BL, Additional MS 59681. See MacMillan, “Discourse on History, Geography, and Law,” pp. 7–20.

20 BL, Lansdowne MS 122, fol. 30, and Cotton MS Otho E.viii, fols. 78–80.

21 Humphrey Gilbert, “Discourse How to Annoy the King of Spain,” Public Record Office (PRO), SP 12/118/12(1). Dee's map is at the Free Library of Philadelphia, Rare Book Department, Elkins Americana 42.

22 Cormack, Charting an Empire, pp. 1, 229.

23 Best, A True Discourse, title page.

24 BL, Additional MS 28420, fol. 30.

25 This is the opinion of a Spanish prisoner captured by Drake, quoted in Wallis, Hellen, “The Cartography of Drake's Voyage,” in Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage, 1577–1580 ed. Thrower, Norman J. W. (Berkeley, 1984), p. 123Google Scholar.

26 See ibid.

27 John Dee, “A Discourse of the Voyage Made by Master Francis Drake,” BL, Lansdowne MS 122, fols. 21–28.

28 Dee implies this censorship of his work in the “Brytanici Imperii Limites,” BL, Additional MS 59681, p. 73.

29 BL, Additional MS 38823, fol. 1.

30 BL, Cotton MS Otho E.viii, fols. 128–29.

31 Raleigh, Walter, The Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana (London, 1596), p. 26Google Scholar.

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37 See, e.g., the diplomatic correspondence from English resident ambassadors in Spain and Portugal between 1607 and 1613: PRO, SP 89/3 articles 86, 164, 166, and 170; SP 94/18 articles 59, 65, 216, 238; SP 94/19 articles 139, 143, 147, 170, 263, 293; SP 94/20/33. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Salisbury XIX, pp. 28, 53, 78, 171, 178, 185, 194–95, 207, XX, p. 56, XXI, p. 288. See also the Spanish correspondence, translated and reprinted in Wright, Irene A., “Spanish Policy toward Virginia, 1606–12,” American Historical Review 25 (1920): 470–79Google Scholar.

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52 Ibid., D.41.2.11.

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54 “Diary of the Conferences and Proceedings in the Treaty of London, 1604,” BL, Sloane MS 1851, fols. 100–9; Robert Cotton, “Reasons for the Trade into the East and West Indians for the Merchants of England,” BL, Cotton MS Vespasian C.xiii, fols. 47–50.

55 “The true limits of all the countries and provinces as [are at] present actually possessed by the Spaniards & Portugals,” PRO, CO 1/1/32, fols. 107–8.

56 PRO, SP 103/9, fols. 273–74; BL, Cotton MS Otho E.viii, fols. 252–53.

57 For example, Kratochwil, Freidrich et al. , Peace and Disputed Sovereignty: Reflections on Conflict over Territory (Landham, 1985)Google Scholar; Shaw, Malcolm, Title to Territory in Africa: International Legal Issues (Oxford, 1986), p. 2–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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63 Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, 3:461.

64 See Zandvliet, Kees, Mapping for Money: Maps, Plans, and Topographic Paintings and Their Role in Dutch Overseas Expansion during the 16th and 17th Centuries (Amsterdam, 1998)Google Scholar; and Schmidt, “Mapping an Empire.”

65 Anglerii, Petri Martyris, De Orbe Novo (Paris, 1587)Google Scholar.

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69 The fair copy map, located in the British Museum, is based on White's rough draft, PRO, MPG 1/584, which was sketched during his trip to America.

70 See the entry in Pollard, Alfred W. and Redgrave, Gilbert R., A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1475–1640 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985), STC 12786Google Scholar.

71 Smith, John, A Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Country, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion (Oxford, 1612)Google Scholar.

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73 Ibid., p. 10.

74 Ibid., p. 2.

75 Hariot, Briefe and True Report, pls. 3 and 21–22. An interesting, though circumspect, interpretation of these images is in Brod, Raymond M., “The Art of Persuasion: John Smith's New England and Virginia Maps,” Historical Geography 24 (1995): 91–106Google Scholar. Although making no mention of de Bry's edition of Hariot's text, Brod suggests that the Powhatan illustration could have been based on the way the English court sat in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, and that the native figure is drawn similar to a Greek statue in order to portray the “unknown and mysterious inhabitants of Virginia as a noble and classic group of individuals” (p. 98).

76 Smith, A Map of Virginia, p. 36.

77 Verner, “Smith's Virginia and its Derivatives,” pp. 18–38. Different states were placed into Purchas's Pilgrimage (1613, 1614, 1617) and Hakluytus Posthumus (1625), and six editions of Smith's General History of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, published between 1624 and 1632 (see the entries in Pollard and Redgrave, STC 22790-22790d). Other derivatives were printed in Johann Theodore de Bry's (the son of Theodore de Bry) Dreyzehender Theil Americae (1628), and various editions of the younger Gerhard Mercator's Atlas Minor (1628, thirteen editions to 1636), Atlas Sive Cosmographicae (1630), and L'Appendice de l'Atlas (1633).

78 Smith, John, A Description of New England (London, 1616), p. 2rGoogle Scholar.

79 The map appeared in his General History (1624–32) and his Advertisements for the Planters of New England (1631), and in Sparke and Cartwright's Historia Mundi, or Mercator's Atlas (1636–39). In the latter, the words “Prince of Great Britain” under the title were replaced by “now King of Great Britain.”

80 Wallis, Helen, “Purchas's Maps,” in The Purchas Handbook: Studies of the Life, Times, and Writings of Samuel Purchas, 1577–1626, ed. Pennington, L. E. (London, 1997), pp. 145–66Google Scholar.

81 Brigg's “Hudson's Bay” would become James Bay, and his “Button's Bay” would become Hudson Bay.

82 For example, Seed, Ceremonies of Possession; Juricek, “English Territorial Claims”; and Keller, Arthur S. et al. , Creation of Rights of Sovereignty through Symbolic Acts, 1400–1800 (New York, 1938; reprint, 1967)Google Scholar.

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