1755 Nicolas Bellin Map of North America

This grand map of 1755 J. N. Bellin map of North America presents one of the clearest statements of France's boldly aggressive territorial claims in North America at the dawn of the French and Indian War (1754 - 1763).

A Closer Look

The map encompasses North America from the Gulf of Mexico to Baffin Bay and from a highly speculative Pacific Coast as far east as Greenland and Iceland. It centers on the Mississippi Watershed and the Great Lakes, both presented in detail. France's territorial claims are emphasized with outline color - English territories are relegated to coastal colonies, with broad French control over the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi. The British are afforded control over Acadia (Nova Scotia) south of Milfort, and the southern part of Newfoundland. In addition to the marked borders are an array of French forts along their frontiers. France's border with Mexico - along Texas' Rio Colorado - runs far to the north before trailing off into the legendary lands of Quivira and Tegouaio 'of which we have no certain knowledge.'

Points to the west of Quivira reveal scant detail. Bellin discusses the 16th-century reports stemming from Sir Francis Drake's voyage. To the north, the straits of Juan de Fuca and Martin d'Aguilar are indicated and proposed as the entry to a Sea of the West. (The supposed existence of which was a current fashion dominating French cartography, having been initiated by Philippe Buache and J. N. De l'Isle a few years prior.) Bellin does not go so far as to mark the coastlines of the imaginary inland sea and bluntly notes On n'a aucune Connoisance de ces Parties, that is, 'we have no knowledge of these parts.' Far to the northwest, with no connection to known coasts, are coastlines discovered by the Russians in 1741. Again, Bellin cautiously notes in French the 'Lands discovered by the Russians in 1741 without having landed there... we do not know if these are islands or the continent.'

The Great Lakes and Points West

The map's treatment of all five of the Great Lakes is consistent with Bellin's more narrowly focused map on this region, which had presented the most state-of-the-art cartography of the lakes to appear since the turn-of-the-century maps of Guillaume De l'Isle. Bellin's cartography incorporates the work of the French fur trader and explorer Sieur la Verendrye and the explorer-missionary Father Pierre de Charlevoix. This resulted in many improvements over De L'Isle in the form of the Great Lakes and their client river systems. However, Bellin erred in adopting Charlevoix's fictional islands in Lake Superior, including I. Philippeaux, I. Pontchartrain, and I. St. Anne.

Other detail appears to have been drawn from La Verendrye's 1731 and 1742 efforts to find a route to the Pacific. While he did reach the Mandan villages of the Upper Missouri River, much of his mapping consisted of misinterpretation of American Indian maps. Thus, as transferred by Bellin here, we can see the seeds of later, very popular cartographic specters, such as the River of the West and the Sea of the West. The river-and-lake systems to the west-north-west of the Great Lakes and the 'Pais des Assiniboiles' result from La Verendrye's reports.

Publication History and Census

Bellin's map was printed in 1755 as a separate issue. There are at leat five states of this map, according to McGuirk: the first state is unnumbered and has no price marked; the second state has a plate number 'No. 56' on the upper right, and the price 'Prix trente sols' in the lower right. While the trimming of the present example would have eliminated the plate number, there is enough matter beyond the lower border to show that this example lacked the price notation and is, consequently, a 1755nfirst-state example. The map was later incorporated into Bellin's Hydrographie Françoise, published in 1772; all of which included the map in its second state. Moreover, examples of the map from the Hydrographie Françoise were generally uncolored; otherwise, we see no material changes. Perhaps 33 examples of the separate map are listed in OCLC, albeit generally with no indication of state; thus, a census of true first-state examples is not practical.