Sovereignty "more plainly described": Early English maps of North America, 1580-1625

Journal of British Studies

Volumn 42, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 413-447

  MacMillan, Ken ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 14844310501     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/376461     Document Type: Review

References (124)

1. J. B. Harley, "Meaning and Ambiguity in Tudor Cartography," in English Map-Making 1500-1650, ed. Sarah Tyacke (London, 1983), pp. 22-45, quotation on p. 22
2. Many of Harley's cartographical writings have been collected in J. B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore, 2001). Also see the bibliography compiled by Matthew H. Edney in that volume, pp. 282-96
3. J. B. Harley and David Woodward, "Concluding Remarks," in The History of Cartography, vol. 1
4. Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago, 1987), p. 506
5. See James Akerman, "The Structuring of Political Territory in Early Printed Atlases," Imago Mundi 47 (1995): 138-55
6. Peter Barber, "Maps and Monarchs in Europe, 1500-1800," in Royal and Republicanism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Robert Oresko et al. (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 75-124
7. Michael Biggs, "Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State Formation," Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (1999): 374-405
8. John Rennie Short, Representing the Republic: Mapping the United States 1600-1900 (London, 2001), pp. 9-75
9. David Turnbull, Masons, Tricksters, and Cartographers (Amsterdam, 2000), chap. 3
10. Michael Wintle, "Renaissance Maps and the Construction of the Idea of Europe," Journal of Historical Geography 25 (1999): 137-65
11. Denis Wood, The Power of Maps (New York, 1992)
12. Peter Barber, "England II: Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps, 1550-1625," in Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Buisseret (Chicago, 1992), esp. pp. 62-77
13. Lesley Cormack, Charting an Empire: Geography at the English Universities, 1580-1620 (Chicago, 1997)
14. Andrew Gordon and Bernhard Klein, eds., Literature, Mapping, and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 2001)
15. Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago, 1992), pp. 108-24
16. Swen Voekel, '"Upon the Suddaine View:' State, Civil Society and Surveillance in Early Modern England," Early Modern Literary Studies 4.2 (September 1998): 21-27, URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/04-2/ voekupon.htm
17. For example, William P. Cumming, "Early Maps of the Chesapeake Bay Area: Their Relation to Settlement and Society," in Early Maryland in a Wider World, ed. D. B. Quinn (Detroit, 1982), pp. 267-310
18. James E. Kelly, Jr., "Distortions on Sixteenth-Century Maps of America," Cartographica 32 (1995): 1-13
19. D. B. Quinn, "Artists and Illustrators in Early Mapping of North America," in his Explorers and Colonies: America, 1500-1625 (London, 1990), pp. 62-66
20. and "The Early Cartography of Maine in the Setting of Early European Exploration of New England and the Maritimes," in his European Approaches to North America, 1450-1640 (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 41-67
21. Benjamin Schmidt, "Mapping an Empire: Cartographic and Colonial Rivalry in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and English North America," William and Mary: Quarterly, 3d ser. 54 (1997): 549-78, at p. 563
22. J. B. Harley, "Maps and the Invention of America," Map Collector 58 (1992): 8-10
23. William Boelhower, "Inventing America: A Model of Cartographic Semiosis," Word and Image 4 (1988): 475-97
24. Arthur H. Robinson, "It Was the Map-Makers Who Really Discovered America," Cartographica 29 (1992): 31-36
25. Short, Representing the Republic, p. 54
26. Recent historians have seen similar aspects of the power of mapping in imperial settings. See, e.g., D. Graham Burnett, Masters of All They Surveyed: Exploration, Geography, and a British El Dorado (Chicago, 2000)
27. Raymond B. Craib, "Cartography and Power in the Conquest and Creation of New Spain," Latin American Research Review 35 (2000): 7-36
28. John G. Reid, "The Conquest of 'Nova Scotia': Cartographic Imperialism and the Echoes of a Scottish Past," in Nation and Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas, 1600-1800, ed. Ned C. Landsman (London, 2001), pp. 39-59
29. Mary C. Fuller, Voyages in Print: English Travel to America, 1576-1624 (New York, 1995)
30. Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain, and France, c. 1500-c. 1800 (New Haven, Conn., 1995)
31. Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (Cambridge, 1995)
32. Humphrey Gilbert, A Discourse of a Discoverie for a New Passage to Cataia (London, 1576)
33. George Best, A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discoverie (London, 1578)
34. Richard Hakluyt, Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America and Islands Adjacent (London, 1582)
35. For example, Peter Apian, Charte Cosmographique (Venice, 1553)
36. Giacomo Gastaldi, Universale Novo (Venice, 1548)
37. and Sebastian Münster, Nova Insulae XXVI Nova Tabula (Basle, 1552) share many similarities with these early English maps
38. Cormack, Chartingan Empire, chaps. 3 and 5
39. Tyacke, English Map-Making
40. P. D. A. Harvey, Maps in Tudor England (Chicago, 1993)
41. R. A. Skelton and P. D. A. Harvey, eds., Local Maps and Plans from Medieval England (Oxford, 1986)
42. Catherine Delano-Smith, "Map Ownership in Sixteenth-Century Cambridge: The Evidence of Probate Inventories," Imago Mundi 47 (1995): 67-93
43. William Sherman, "Putting the British Seas on the Map: John Dee's Imperial Cartography," Cartographica 35 (1998): 1-10
44. Cormack, Charting an Empire, pp. 124-28
45. Ken MacMillan, "Discourse on Geography, History, and Law: John Dee and the Limits of the British Empire," Canadian Journal of History 36 (2001): 4-11
46. John Dee, "Of Famous and Rich Discoveries [1577]," BL, Cotton MS Vitellius C.vii, fols. 26-269
47. "Brytanici Imperii Limites [1577-78]," BL, Additional MS 59681. See MacMillan, "Discourse on History, Geography, and Law," pp. 7-20
48. Best, A True Discourse, title page
49. This is the opinion of a Spanish prisoner captured by Drake, quoted in Hellen Wallis, "The Cartography of Drake's Voyage," in Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage, 1577-1580, ed. Norman J. W. Thrower (Berkeley, 1984), p. 123
50. John Dee, "A Discourse of the Voyage Made by Master Francis Drake," BL, Lansdowne MS 122, fols. 21-28
51. Walter Raleigh, The Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana (London, 1596), p. 26
52. Raleigh's map is BL, Additional MS 17940(A). See also Charles Nicholl, The Creature in the Map: A Journey to El Dorado (London, 1995), pp. 15-18
53. and Burnett, Masters of All They Surveyed, chap. 2
54. James Rosier, A True Relation of the Most Prosperous Voyage Made This Present Year 1605 by Captain George Weymouth (London, 1605), preface
55. Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609, (Cambridge, 1969), 1:105
56. Mendoza to the King, 18 June 1578, Great Britain, Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series (Spanish), 2:594
57. and David B. Quinn and Alison M. Quinn, eds., The English New England Voyages (London, 1983), pp. 520-23
58. See also the Spanish correspondence, translated and reprinted in Irene A. Wright, "Spanish Policy toward Virginia, 1606-12," American Historical Review 25 (1920): 470-79
59. Boelhower, "Inventing America"
60. Mark Koch, "Ruling the World: The Cartographic Gaze in Elizabethan Accounts of the New World," Early Modern Literary Studies 4.2 (September 1998): 11.1-39, http://purl.oclc.org/emls/04-2/kochruli.htm
61. Ronald Rees, "Historical Links between Cartography and Art," Historical Geographical Review 70 (1980): 60-78
62. Francisco de Vitoria, Vitoria: Political Writings, ed. and trans. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrence (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 12, 85, 254-64
63. Thomas Starkey, Dialogue between Pole and Lupset (London, 1529-32)
64. Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the Gover-nour (London, 1531)
65. Jean Bodin, Six livres de la république (Paris, 1576)
66. See also various essays in David Armitage, ed., Theories of Empire, 1450-1800 (Aldershot, 1998)
67. Vitoria, "On Civil Power," in Pagden, ed., Vitoria: Political Writings, sec. 3.4
68. See Donald R. Kelley, "Law," in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450-1700, ed. J. H. Burns (Cambridge, 1991), esp. pp. 84-86
69. and "Civil Science in the Renaissance: The Problem of Interpretation," in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 57-78
70. Alberico Gentili, De jure belli libri tres, trans. John C. Rolfe (New York, 1964), pp. 8-10
71. Thomas Ridley, A View of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Law (London, 1607)
72. See Brian P. Levack, The Civil Lawyers in England, 1603-1641: A Political Study (Oxford, 1977), chap. 1
73. and Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford, 1999), chap. 1
74. James Muldoon, Empire and Order: The Concept of Empire, 800-1800 (New York, 1999)
75. Kent McNeil, Common Law Aboriginal Title (Oxford, 1989), p. 110 and chap. 4
76. John Barton, "The Faculty of Law," in The History of the University of Oxford, ed. J. McConica (Oxford, 1986), 3:263-70
77. Levack, The Civil Lawyers, chaps. 1-2
78. Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace, chaps. 1-2
79. Justinian, The Digest of Justinian, ed. and trans. Theodor Mommsen and Alan Watson (Philadelphia, 1985)
80. Olive P. Dickason and L. C. Green, The Law of Nations and the New World (Edmonton, 1993)
81. Pagden, Lords of All the World, chaps. 2-3
82. Anthony Pagden, Peoples and Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest from Greece to the Present (New York, 2001), pp. 24-28
83. Justinian, The Digest of Justinian, D.41
84. R. Y. Jennings, The Acquisition of Territory in International Law (Manchester, 1963), chap. 1
85. John T. Juricek, "English Territorial Claims in North America under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts," Terrae Incognitae 7 (1975): 8-10
86. Juricek, "English Territorial Claims," p. 11
87. "Diary of the Conferences and Proceedings in the Treaty of London, 1604," BL, Sloane MS 1851, fols. 100-9
88. Robert Cotton, "Reasons for the Trade into the East and West Indians for the Merchants of England," BL, Cotton MS Vespasian C.xiii, fols. 47-50
89. "The true limits of all the countries and provinces as [are at] present actually possessed by the Spaniards & Portugals," PRO, CO 1/1/32, fols. 107-8
90. For example, Freidrich Kratochwil et al., Peace and Disputed Sovereignty: Reflections on Conflict over Territory (Landham, 1985)
91. Malcolm Shaw, Title to Territory in Africa: International Legal Issues (Oxford, 1986), p. 2-17
92. Cyndia Susan Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 1-66 and 218-24
93. David M. Loades, Politics, Censorship and the English Reformation (London, 1992)
94. Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (Madison, Wis., 1984)
95. But see Mark Bland's dissenting opinion: '"Invisible Dangers': Censorship and the Subversion of Authority in Early Modern England," Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America 90 (1996): 151-93
96. Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes, 4 vols. (London, 1625), 1.v.700 and 4.ix. 1779
97. Delano-Smith, "Map Ownership in Sixteenth-Century Cambridge."
98. See, e.g., Peter Barber, "Necessary and Ornamental: Map Use in England under the Later Stuarts, 1660-1714," Eighteenth Century Life 14 (1990): 1-28, esp. 1-5
99. Bradin Cormack, "Marginal Waters: Pericles and the Idea of Jurisdiction," in Gordon and Klein, eds., Literature, Mapping, and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain
100. Catherine Delano-Smith and Roger J. P. Kain, English Maps: A History (Toronto, 1999), esp. chaps. 1-3
101. Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, 3:461
102. See Kees Zandvliet, Mapping for Money: Maps, Plans, and Topographic Paintings and Their Role in Dutch Overseas Expansion during the 16th and 17th Centuries (Amsterdam, 1998)
103. and Schmidt, "Mapping an Empire."
104. Petri Martyris Anglerii, De Orbe Novo (Paris, 1587)
105. Using strong circumstantial evidence, Mary Frear Keeler establishes Boazio's presence in "The Boazio Maps of 1585-86," Terrae Incognitae 10 (1978): 71-80
106. Henry C. Taylor, "A Discussion of the ... General Chart and City Plans of Baptista Boazio," in his edition of Thomas Greepe, The True and Perfecte Newes [1587] (Hartford, Conn., 1955), pp. 53-54
107. Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (Frankfort, 1590)
108. See the entry in Alfred W. Pollard and Gilbert R. Redgrave, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1475-1640 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985), STC 12786
109. John Smith, A Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Country, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion (Oxford, 1612)
110. Hariot, Briefe and True Report, pls. 3 and 21-22
111. An interesting, though circumspect, interpretation of these images is in Raymond M. Brod, "The Art of Persuasion: John Smith's New England and Virginia Maps," Historical Geography 24 (1995): 91-106
112. Smith, A Map of Virginia, p. 36
113. Verrier, "Smith's Virginia and its Derivatives," pp. 18-38
114. John Smith, A Description of New England (London, 1616), p. 2r
115. The map appeared in his General History (1624-32)
116. and his Advertisements for the Planters of New England (1631)
117. and in Sparke and Cartwright's Historia Mundi, or Mercator's Atlas (1636-39). In the latter, the words "Prince of Great Britain" under the title were replaced by "now King of Great Britain."
118. Helen Wallis, "Purchas's Maps," in The Purchas Handbook: Studies of the Life, Times, and Writings of Samuel Purchas, 1577-1626, ed. L. E. Pennington (London, 1997), pp. 145-66
119. Brigg's "Hudson's Bay" would become James Bay, and his "Button's Bay" would become Hudson Bay
120. For example, Seed, Ceremonies of Possession
121. and Arthur S. Keller et al., Creation of Rights of Sovereignty through Symbolic Acts, 1400-1800 (New York, 1938; reprint, 1967)
122. For example, K. R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge, 1984)
123. David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000)
124. and several essays in Nicholas Canny, ed., The Origins of the Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1998)