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Rare First State!
Foundational pre-French & Indian War map of eastern Canada, from Newfoundland to Lake Ontario and including the Northern portion of New England.
This finely engraved map embraces eastern Canada and northern New England and is focused on the River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, then the gateway to French North America.
The map is an enlarged and refined version of Bellin's map, which was first issued in Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix's Histoire et Description Generale de Nouvelle France, published in Paris in 1744 (Kershaw has identified 4 states of the map). Charlevoix was a Jesuit Priest who explored Canada and America's eastern regions between 1705-1720 and is widely regarded as the most important French exploration of the region in the second half of the 18th Century.
This 1745 state of the map is quite rare, pre-dating the also rare revised 1755 state of the map.
In this 1745 state, the map extends considerably further south than the original 1744 map which appeared in Charlevoix's Histoire . . . , and provides significantly updated cartographic detail in the southwestern part of the map, incorporating Cape Cod, Rhode Island and a portion of upstate New York, along with fine coverage of Lake Champlain. The location of Lake Ontario is also moved further to the west in this edition, just off the map. The 1745 map show the St. Lawerence flowing out of an enlarged Lake Ontario with the major reivers to the west being the Orange River and the Connecticut River. In the revised 1755 state, the Orange River is unnamed (it is the Hudson Rive) and the course of the Connecticut River is significantly revised, with many new place names in the area, which are now delineated as New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and New York. Topographical features and many new place names are added and the shape of Cape Cod revised.
Louisbourg, shown here on Isle Royale (Cape Breton Island), was a massive French fortress, built in 1720. The fort had earlier fallen to the British in 1745, before being returned to France in 1748. The bastion would be finally retaken by the British in 1758, opening Canada to invasion.
In 1759, the British would defeat the French at the Plains of Abraham, thus seizing Quebec City and ensuring Britain's conquest of New France.
Also shown is St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland, England's oldest colony (briefly seized by the French in 1762) and Port La Joie, the main French town of Isle St. Jean (Prince Edward Island). Further to the south is the key British naval base of Halifax (founded 1749) and the largest British city in the northeast, Boston.
The chart, compiled by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703-72), the Hydrographer to Louis XV, was based on the finest available French sea charts and Jesuit maps of the interior. Bellin's manuscripts, on which the present chart is based, are today preserved at the Bibliotheque nationale de France (Paris). Bellin's map would remain the chart of record until Samuel Holland's scientific surveys were published as part of J.F.W. Des Barres Atlantic Neptune (London, 1775-84).
An anchor map for any collection of Canadian cartography.
Rarity
This is the first example of the 1745 map we have offered in over 30 years (1992-2024).
Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772) was among the most important mapmakers of the eighteenth century. In 1721, at only the age of 18, he was appointed Hydrographer to the French Navy. In August 1741, he became the first Ingénieur de la Marine of the Dépôt des cartes et plans de la Marine (the French Hydrographic Office) and was named Official Hydrographer of the French King.
During his term as Official Hydrographer, the Dépôt was the one of the most active centers for the production of sea charts and maps in Europe. Their output included a folio-format sea atlas of France, the Neptune Francois. He also produced a number of sea atlases of the world, including the Atlas Maritime and the Hydrographie Francaise. These gained fame and distinction all over Europe and were republished throughout the eighteenth and even in the nineteenth century.
Bellin also produced smaller format maps such as the 1764 Petit Atlas Maritime, containing 580 finely-detailed charts. He also contributed a number of maps for the 15-volume Histoire Generale des Voyages of Antoine François Prévost.
Bellin set a very high standard of workmanship and accuracy, cementing France's leading role in European cartography and geography during this period. Many of his maps were copied by other mapmakers across the continent.
