|
||
|
|
|
|
Published less than two years after Britain’s First Carib War ended, this is the earliest map to publish the boundary that the 1773 treaty drew between territory reserved for the Black Caribs and districts opened to plantation settlement. Robert Sayer issued the map on 25 February 1775, drawing on the official island survey completed by the chief surveyor John Byres.
Topography is rendered in dense hachure that throws the island’s volcanic spine, crowned by La Soufrière (with its major modern eruptions still ahead of it), into sharp relief, while every perennial stream is traced from headwaters to sea. A dashed line arcs from Rutland Bay north-west halfway up the island and is engraved “Caribs Lands." Along the windward coast many place-names appear in both Cariban and Anglicized forms.
Four civil parishes are engraved over the rugged interior that planters soon cleared for cane. Coastal infrastructure is already sketched in: roads converge on Kingstown, the government seat, and deep embayments such as Cumberland, Chateaubelair, and Grand Sable are named for their value as anchorages or river mouths suitable for sugar mills. A bold fleur-de-lis compass rose steadies the southern margin.
Botanical Garden
Just inland from Kingstown Bay the engraver encloses a small rectangle labelled “Botanical Garden.” Founded in 1765 under Dr George Young and the Royal Engineers, this was the first British botanic station in the Americas. It later became the distribution hub for William Bligh’s breadfruit cargo of 1793, supplying Jamaica and other islands with the plant that would feed enslaved laborers. Its appearance here is therefore one of the earliest cartographic notices of an institution that would sit at the crossroads of Caribbean science, plantation economy, and imperial food security.
Robert Sayer (ca. 1724-1794) was a prominent London map publisher. Robert’s father was a lawyer, but his older brother married Mary Overton, the widow of prominent mapmaker Philip Overton and the proprietor of his shop after his death. Mary continued the business for roughly a year after her marriage and then, in early 1748, it passed to Robert. Robert became a freeman of the Stationers’ Company later that year; his first advertisement as an independent publisher was released in December.
Sayer benefited from Overton’s considerable stock, which included the plates of John Senex. In the 1750s, Sayer specialized in design books and topographical prints, as well as comic mezzotints. In 1753, he, along with John Roque, published a new edition of Thomas Read’s Small British Atlas, the first of several county atlases that Sayer would publish.
Sayer’s business continued to grow. In 1760 he moved further down Fleet Street to larger premises at 53 Fleet Street. In 1766, he acquired Thomas Jefferys’ stock when the latter went bankrupt. In 1774, he entered into a partnership with John Bennett, his former apprentice. The pair specialized in American atlases, based on the work of Jefferys. They also began publishing navigational charts in the 1780s and quickly became the largest supplier of British charts in the trade.
Bennett’s mental health declined, and the partnership ended in 1784. As Sayer aged, he relied on his employees Robert Laurie and James Whittle, who eventually succeeded him. He spent more and more time at his house in Richmond. In 1794, he died in Bath.
![[Virgin Islands] Cartes De Supplement Pour Les Isles Antilles](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/107782.jpg)
