Historic Maps
c. 1755 Handcolored Map of The Great Lakes and Canada
c. 1755 (1755-Dated) French and Indian War Era, Hand-colored, Copper Plate-engraved, Map, Primarily of North America Great Lakes Region and Southeastern portions of Canada, entitled, “Partie Orientale de la Nouvelle France ou du CANADA...,” Jacques Nicolas Bellin, (Nuremberg), Choice Very Fine.
This original Double-page engraved map of North America and Eastern Canada with lovely original yellow outline Hand-coloring, on a sheet measuring 21” x 23.75” and being a well printed and quite impressive, Pre-French and Indian War era map. The full title, as printed within the upper central Cartouche reads, in full:

“Partie Orientale de la Nouvelle France ou du CANADA - Par Mr. Bellin Ingenieur du Roy et de la Marine Pour Seruir a’ L’Intelligence des Affaires et de L’Etat present en Amerique, communiquee’ au Public par les Heritiers de Homan, en L’an 1755.”

It is a very fine edition of Bellin's map, and considered one of the most important early maps of the Great Lakes. This important map depicts the Great Lakes as they appeared in the years immediately before the Seven Years War, and significantly, it "constituted the first new material pertaining to New France to appear since the maps of Guillaume de L'Isle three decades earlier" (Heidenreich & Dahl). The present map represents the edition published by the esteemed firm, Homann Heirs as part of their Atlas Maior. It is closely derived from Bellin's 1745 first state of the map. A curious aspect of the map is its foreshortened rendering of Pennsylvania and New York. While this map evinces the latest in French knowledge of the region, it curiously places many fictitious islands, most notably "Ile Philippeaux" in Lake Superior.

The land is still shown to be the domain of various native nations, including the "Pays des Iroquois" and the "Pays de Miami," and features the locations of numerous native villages. This in mind, the region was under tenuous French hegemony, as indicated by the presence of forts and Jesuit missions, such as "Fort Frontenac" (Kingston, Ontario), Niagara, Detroit, Sault Ste. Marie, and Kaskasquias in southern Illinois. The future site of Chicago is noted on the shores of Lake Michigan as "R. et Port de Chicagon". The coastline of the Thirteen Colonies from Chesapeake Bay to New York City is visible in the lower right corner.

Bellin's rendering of the Great Lakes proved to be the most important cartographic source in the coming decades, most notably for John Mitchell's A Map of the British & French Dominions in North America (1755), the map that was used to define the boundaries of the newly independent United States in 1783. The composition includes in the upper center-right by an extremely well engraved title cartouche. See: “The Mapping of America,” page 165, plate 97. Overall, this historic map is in excellent quality and ready for framing and display.