A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, with the Roads, Distances, Limits and Extent of the Settlements, Humbly Inscribed to the Right Honourable The Earl of Halifax, And the other Right Honourable The Lords Commissioners for Trade & Plantations, by their Lordships Most Obliged and very humble servant Jn.o Mitchell
London: Jeffreys and Faden, 1755 (?1774). Third edition, second impression.
Eight engraved sheets dissected into 32 sections and mounted on linen (1378mm x 1946mm) with hand-color in outline. Presented in a contemporary tree-marbled calf wooden slip-case.
Lightly but evenly tanned. Some offsetting and pigment oxidation. The slip-case in disrepair.
How often does a tool so fully meet its intended goal that it continues to be used for two centuries? The map of the eastern part of North America made by John Mitchell (1711–1768) is such a tool. Mitchell was a close friend of the second Earl of Halifax (to whom the map is dedicated), who as president of the Board of Trade 1748–1761 was able to furnish Mitchell with the most accurate and up-to-date surveys that had been made of the terrain. He consulted every map he could; he wrote to Cadwallader Colden that “there are none I believe but what I have consulted.” This tremendous effort made all the difference, placing this map head-and-shoulders above others, even as cartographic knowledge advanced over the centuries.
The enduring success of the map is all the more notable in view of its combativeness. Mitchell’s map was not neutral or nonpartisan; it was full-throatedly pro-English and anti-French. Borders were freely extended and transposed to maximize British territory. It would go to some 21 states (impressions and editions) by 1781, and was translated into Dutch, French and Italian. It was the third edition that lay before John Jay during the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Paris (1783; now in the New-York Historical Society). The latest known use of the map is in the resolution of the 1980’s disagreement between the U.S. and Canada over fisheries in Maine.
Purchased at the Sotheby’s London sale of Sir Brooke Charles Boothby, 15th Baronet (13 December 2023, lot 79) removed from Fonmon Castle, Glamorgan in South Wales. Born in 1949, Sir Brooke has done a great deal to revivify his family home on the Welsh coast. Perhaps the map was acquired by his forebear the 6th Baronet (1744–1824), who was in the circle of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; the unusually sensuous portrait of Sir Brooke by Joseph Wright of Derby at Tate Britain shows him reclining with a volume of Rousseau’s.
Stephenson, Richard W. “Table for identifying variant editions and impressions of John Mitchell’s Map...” pp. 109–113 in A la Carte, ed. Walter W. Ristow (Washington: Library of Congress, 1972).
Howes M 678; Pritchard-Taliaferro 33; Stevens-Tree 54(e).
This map was the subject of a lecture given by Dr. Rosenberg at the Peoria Riverfront Museum; please click here to watch!
Item #JLR0784
Price: $375,000