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Drawn From Henry Popple's 20 Sheet Map of British Colonies North America

Scarce 2 sheet map of Florida, Texas, the Gulf Coast, Central America, the Yucatan and Caribbean, published by Philippe Buache in 1740.

Based upon Popple's 20 sheet map, Buache provides a remarkably detailed image of the Gulf of Mexico, including the routes of the Spanish ships and the currents of the ocean in the Caribbean well before the "discovery" of the Gulf Stream.

Though Buache had drawn a manuscript map of the Gulf region before Popple's map was published, he updated his rendering to take into account the improved information. While the focus of the map is on the navigational information, with soundings, shoals, currents, and so forth, Buache includes much information of the interior of South America, Central America, and what the southern part of present-day United States from Texas to Georgia. 

The map is incredibly detailed, not only sharing geographic information, but also thematic information about the winds, units of measuring distance, and imperial boundaries. This map is drawn largely from Henry Popple's Map of 1733, including notes showing the boundary of Carolina in the middle of the Florida peninsula.

The waters are criss-crossed by rhumb lines, a nod to the intense commercial activity that roved the waters of the Caribbean, Atlantic, and even the western Pacific. At the center is Cuba, Jamaica, and the other profitable, imperially-controlled, slave-labor-fueled islands of the Caribbean.  The direction of the currents is noted with arrows.

Inland, mountain ranges, rivers, and settlements are highlighted. At sea, a dot-and-dash line indicates the areas in which the trade winds operate. A dotted line on the Gulf Coast shows the limit of where a ship can sound the bottom, while a solid double line shows the galleon route between Veracruz and Havana.

An area of especial detail is what is now Texas, where there are notes on seventeenth and eighteenth-century missions and forts. It is appreciatively more detailed than Thomas Jeffrey’s contemporary Gulf Coast map.

The text in the upper right corner carries an explanation of the derivation and differences in measurements of distance and depth. The text box also compares calculations of longitude from Paris and the Isle de Fer in the Canary Islands. The text translates as follows:

Publisher's Observation Regarding Measurements

There are two types of miles in England: the Geometric Mile of 5000 feet and the Legal Mile of 5280 feet (Edw. Bernard de Mensuris p. 237). However, since both these miles are based on the English foot, which is shorter than the French or Paris foot by about one-sixteenth — with the English foot being to the Paris foot as 864 is to 933, according to the precise comparison made in 1737 by M. de Mairan and M. du Fay of the Royal Academy of Sciences — it is clear that these two different miles are shorter than the French mile.

The English Geometric Mile measures only 938 paces, 4 feet, 1 inch, 10 lines of the French foot. The Legal Mile, larger than the Geometric Mile, measures 994 paces, 2 feet, 5 inches, 1 line. The Fathom, or Brasse, of 6 English feet contains only 5 feet, 7 inches, 7 lines of the same French foot.

It is further necessary to note that, as the length of a degree is 57,060 toises or 68,472 French paces, according to M. Picard’s measurement, the 60 miles marked for the measure of a degree cannot measure it exactly unless English navigators use a third type of mile, larger than the other two. The 60 English Geometric Miles fall short of the degree by 12,143 French paces, and the 60 Legal Miles fall short by 9,707 paces, neglecting fractions.

M. Hook complains on page 457 of his posthumous works published in London in 1705 that English navigators had no regard, in their Log measurement upon which the route is estimated, for the true length of the degree, which they supposed to be only 60 Legal Miles, or 316,800 feet, equating to 63,360 Geometric paces of the English foot. M. Hook, adopting the degree measurement made by Norwood in 1635 between London and York, assigned the degree 73,040 English paces. Harris (in Lexicon Technicum, 1736 Edition, Vol. II, under "Log-line") informs us that, in practice, most English navigators continue to make the degree too short and that those who try to correct this error choose to give only 24 or 25 seconds to the duration of the sandglass flow, which is assumed in Log calculations to be equal to half a minute. This, he says, is adding a second error to the first.

The French Caribbean

Dated 1780, this map shows the French Caribbean in a period of transition, at the end of the First French Colonial Empire. The French had colonies in the Antilles, where they still maintain some holdings, and on Saint Domingue; indeed, the latter was their most lucrative colony. All of the colonies were dominated by plantation agriculture, especially sugar cultivation, and forcibly worked by enslaved people of African descent.

After the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France lost its North American colonies. Napoleon Bonaparte regained the Louisiana Territory from Spain in 1800. Napoleon had intended to re-establish the French North American Empire, but the high costs of his continuing wars led him to decide to sell the land instead. This transaction is now called the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the United States and leaving France in 1803 again with only its Caribbean holdings in the Western Hemisphere.

The French first established themselves in the region on the South American coastline in what is today French Guiana in 1624. A year later, they founded a colony on St. Kitts, which was shared with the British until 1713. Meanwhile, the Compagnie des Îles de l’Amérique started plantation colonies on Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1635; Saint Lucia followed in 1643, and Grenada in 1649. Dominica was settled from 1690. Guadeloupe and Martinique, along with other French Caribbean holdings like Dominica, Saint Lucia, and Grenada, were taken by the British during the Seven Years’ War. However, Guadeloupe and Martinique were ceded back to France as a result of the Treaty of Paris. Saint Lucia would also be returned at the end of the American Revolution.

By far the most valuable Caribbean colony was Saint Domingue, on the western half of the island of Hispaniola. The Spanish and French shared the island from 1664, when the French founded their claim, and 1795, when Spain gave France their half of Hispaniola due to the wars stemming from the French Revolution.

In 1791, a massive slave revolt in Saint Domingue shook French dominance. The rebels were led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, but he was captured by the French in 1801. Under Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the revolution continued, and the Republic of Haiti was declared in 1804—the world’s first Black republic. However, France was loathe to recognize their former colony as an independent state; France would only recognize Haiti in 1825.

Today, France still has several Caribbean territories under its sovereignty. These are the overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and the overseas collectivities of Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy.