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This late 18th-century French map was engraved for a French edition of William Robertson’s History of America. Widely disseminated in multiple languages over the ensuing decades, Robertson’s work—and Kitchin’s cartographic contributions—shaped European understanding of the Spanish Empire’s holdings in North America during a critical era of imperial contest and Enlightenment inquiry.

The map extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, and from the Yucatán Peninsula to the northern reaches of modern-day Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Within this range, it emphasizes colonial-era administrative and missionary sites, rivers, indigenous groups, and early settlements. A notable feature is the large inset map at lower left, titled Supplément des Environs de Méxique, which provides a detailed view of the Valley of Mexico and the lakes around Mexico City, including Lac de Texcuco and Lac de Chalco, highlighting both indigenous and Spanish toponyms.

To the north, “Nouvelle Albion” appears along the Pacific Coast—a holdover from Francis Drake’s 1579 voyage—while the Baja Peninsula is depicted with relative accuracy, showing La Paz, Loreto, and St. Lucie. In New Mexico and Arizona, we see references to early mission and presidio towns, including Santa Fe, El Paso, and Janos, as well as indigenous nations such as the Apaches, Navajos, and Teguas. A large region east of the Rio Grande is labeled Nouv. Royaume de Leon, and east of that lies a relatively underexplored Texas interior, marked with sparse settlements like Nacogdoches and San Antonio but filled with named tribes such as the Canecies and Cadodiuas.

The map predates the intensive Jesuit and Franciscan exploration of Upper California, which began in earnest in the late 1760s and 1770s with Junípero Serra and the founding of missions such as San Diego de Alcalá (1769) and San Carlos Borromeo (1770). As a result, northern and coastal California here is little more than a theoretical coastline labeled Nouvelle Albion, with minimal interior information—a reflection of how limited European geographic knowledge of the region remained in 1777.

In Texas and northern New Spain, the map includes important early Spanish outposts but shows vast interior regions as “Espace de Terre Inconnue”—land of unknown extent and geography. This demonstrates the reliance on older sources and traveler accounts rather than systematic surveys, which were still decades away.