Sign In

- Or use -
Forgot Password Create Account
This item has been sold, but you can enter your email address to be notified if another example becomes available.
Description

A Remarkable Wall Map of the United States

Fine example of the scarce second state of Antonio Zatta's 12-sheet edition of John Mitchell's monumental map of North America.

The first state of Zatta's map holds the distinction of the first printed map devoted to the thirteen states, and to use a name distinguishing them from their previous status as British Colonies. The name 'United Colonies' (Colonie Unite) was used in the Declaration of Independence and was not officially replaced until the Articles of Confederation adopted the name 'The United States of America.' The map covers North America west to the Mississippi and Spanish-owned Louisiana, and north to the Great Lakes. Based upon John Mitchell's landmark map of North America, the Zatta map also includes some additional notes relating to both the Treaty of 1763 and events in the Revolutionary War.

Mitchell's Map of the British and French Dominions in North America . . . is widely regarded as the most important map in American History. Prepared on the eve of the French & Indian War, it was the second large format map of North America printed by the British, and included the best up to date information of the region. Over the next 200 years, it would play a significant role in the resolution of every significant boundary dispute involving the northern border of the then British Colonies, and later the United States. It was also the map-of-record at the birth of the United States and continued in this role through several decades in the early life of the country.

John Mitchell (1711-1768), a respected British physician, botanist, chemist, biologist, and surveyor, lived for a time in Virginia, but returned to England in 1746, where he remained until his death. Mitchell initially conceived of his map of North America in order to present the British public with a single large format image of all the colonies, in order to illustrate the extent of the French threat to the British claims in North America. Mitchell completed his first draft of the map in 1750. However, because Mitchell was limited to publicly available sources of information, this initial effort was rather crude, even in Mitchell's own opinion. As word of Mitchell's work spread, the Board of Trade and Plantations retained Mitchell to make a new map, using the official manuscript and printed maps and reports in the Board's possession, including maps by Fry and Jefferson, Christopher Gist, George Washington, John Barnwell, and others. The Board also instructed all colonial governors to send detailed maps and boundary information for Mitchell's use.

Mitchell's map was first published by Andrew Millar in 1755, the year before war broke out with the French. The map is decidedly pro-English in its interpretation of the various boundaries and geographical information depicted on the map, as would be expected for what amounted to thinly veiled pre-war propaganda. In addition to the geographical detail shown on the map, Mitchell included many annotations describing the extent of British and French settlements. He also submitted a report to the Board in 1752, listing the French encroachments and his ideas to encourage British settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, as a means of combating French influence in the region. Mitchell is also the likely author of The Contest in America Between Great Britain and France by an Impartial Hand (1756), which addresses the same topic.

The first edition of the map was quickly followed by a second edition in 1757, which adds two large blocks of text in the Atlantic Ocean, providing Mitchell's data sources and an account of how he compiled the numerous provincial maps to create this map. After Mitchell's death in 1768, the plates were purchased by Jefferys & Faden, who revised the map and issued a third edition in 1773-74. Faden published a fourth edition in 1775, with the title changed to A Map of the British Colonies in North America ....

Mitchell's map would become the primary political treaty map in American history. Regarded by many authorities as the most important map in the history of American cartography, twenty-one variant states and editions of the map appeared between 1755 and 1781. John Jay used a copy of the third edition during the negotiations of what would become the Treaty of Paris (1783). Thomas Jefferson recommended that Nicholas King use Mitchell's map in preparing a new map for Meriwether Lewis, saying: "it was made with great care we know from what is laid down in those western parts with which we have lately become acquainted." To get even a partial sense of the historic uses to which the map was put, we quote Col. Lawrence Martin, the second chief of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division (as quoted by Ristow, pp.104-05):

[Mitchell's map] is thought to have been in use in the British House of Commons during the debate on the Quebec Act of 1774; it is known to have hung in the halls of Congress in 1802, and several times subsequently. It was used ... in the discussions of British land grants in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and in scores of controversies involving the boundary lines existing at the time of its publication. Great Britain and the United States agreed to its official status in the Convention of September 29, 1827.... it exerted substantial influence in the negotiation and ratification of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, and serious argument was based upon it by Great Britain before the Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1910 in connection with the North Atlantic Coast Fisheries Arbitration. It was submitted in evidence before the Law Lords of the British Privy Council in 1926 in the appeal of Price Brothers & Company, Limited, from a judgment of the supreme court of Canada, and in 1926-27 in the Canada-Newfoundland (Labrador) boundary case. It was used as evidence before the Supreme Court of the United States in the Wisconsin-Michigan boundary case, in 1926-27 in the Great Lakes level case, and in 1932 in the New Jersey-Delaware boundary case."

Several contemporary mapmakers, including Covens & Mortier and Le Rouge, created full sized copies of the Mitchell, while a number of others, including Zatta, created oversized adaptations of the cartographic content of the Mitchell map. First issued in 1778, the Zatta map states that the projection has been corrected by scholars working in Padova.

A fine decorative example of this landmark map of the United States, one of the very few maps to utilize the name given to the 13 states under the Declaration of Independence.

Condition Description
12-sheet map, joined.
Reference
Pritchard & Taliaferro, Degrees of Latitude 33 (state 2); Cumming 293; Stevens and Tree 54; Suarez, Shedding the Veil 56.
Antonio Zatta Biography

Antonio Zatta (fl. 1757-1797) was a prominent Italian editor, cartographer, and publisher. Little is known about his life beyond his many surviving published works. It is possible that he was born as early as 1722 and lived as late as 1804. He lived in Venice and his work flourished between 1757 and 1797. He is best known for his atlas, Atlante Novissimo (1779-1785), and for his prolific output of prints and books that were both precisely made and aesthetically pleasing. Zatta clearly had a large network from which to draw information; this is how he was able to publish the first glimpse of the islands visited by Captain Cook in the Atlante Novissimo. Zatta also published books of plays and architecture.