Slide Sets

Other promotional motifs “on” the map appear as stamps of approval or seals of authority. A copyright or royal privilege to print a map for ten or twenty years, a dedication to the king or heir to the throne, the appeal to scientific measurements, and the listing of official sources of information helped promote confidence in the quality of the work. Mapmakers styled themselves as géographes du roi or geographers to the king, titles which, at least in eighteenth-century France, required official papers of conferment.⁴ Similarly, the official registration one’s work in the form of a privilège du roi (c. 1704) or in accordance with “the act of parliament”⁵ not only protected publishers from counterfeit or spurious works but also gave their maps the stamp of authority.

Perhaps the most revealing promotional elements “on” the map are the persuasive textual additions or visual imagery. Moll, a consummate promoter of British territorial rights in the Americas, was no less of a defender of his own work. He wrote disparagingly of his competition who “with great Shew and Noise frequently advertised their trifling Performances…as for their usefulness, it tends only to lead people into Errors and Dangers...”⁶ Nicolas de Fer’s mural map of the Americas (slide 3), originally published in 1698, and dedicated to the heir to the throne, contains two now famous insets of industrious beavers laboring before a majestic waterfall (Niagara Falls) and workers in the cod fishing industry of Newfoundland.⁷ Depictions of these coveted resources, both shared and fought over by France and England, and other such images, aligned the publisher with popular political agendas.

Map promotion “off” the map included advertisements in journals and newspapers, project proposals, subscription offers, catalogs, and trade cards. Map advertisements appeared in such journals and newspapers as the Gentlemen’s Magazine, the London Gazette, the Mercure de France, and the Journal des Sçavans. For example, on 30 June 1698, the Journal des Sçavans advertised de Fer’s map of America, L’Amerique divisée selon l’etendue de ses principales parties & dont les points principaux sont placez sur les observations de Messieurs de l’Académie Royale des Sciences dressée par N de Fer, geografe de Monseigneur le Dauphin. It asserted that this new work, as grand as his previous wall maps of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the World, not only included additions and changes based on the observations of the members of the Académie des Sciences, but also great embellishments along the border depicting the most curious elements found in the various works written on this area of the world. And of course, the advertisement informed the erudite reader of de Fer’s shop address, “à Paris chez l’auteur, sur le quai de l’horloge.” The same notice appeared in the Mercure de France.

In addition to published maps, journals carried advertisements for “works in progress.” Some map makers offered subscriptions or proposals for their work in an effort to raise much-needed funds for, and interest in, a work yet to be published. For example, seven years before the publication of his Britannia, John Ogilby, advertised a book lottery to finance his grand five-volume project; “all persons concerned may (if they please) repair to take a View of the Volumes, and put in their Money.”⁸ A few months later in the London Gazette, he announced the appearance of the volume on America.⁹ Ogilby’s prospectus of 1672 claimed the king himself had “granted the Undertaker Authority for a General and Actual Survey of the Kingdom of England…and was farther graciously pleas’d to be the first Royal Example, by Subscribing £500 for his Royal Self….”¹⁰ While the royal interest did not quite extend to £500, Ogilby’s Britannia was popular with country gentlemen who purchased it for their libraries.¹¹ John Seller, an instrument maker and hydrographer to the king used the same promotional methods when he published a proposal for his county atlas, Atlas Anglicanus, 1681. He suggested that gentlemen “desirous to have a nearer relation to the said work, paying charges thereof, may have their coat of arms curiously engraven,” and further that “such persons of honour and quality, as shall be pleased to grace this worthy design with a more nearer relation, may have the map of any county they desire, dedicated to them: for which some convenient incouragement is expected.”¹²

Map publishers issued their own catalogs and trade cards as well. A 1716 catalog for Nicolas de Fer, two pages in length, listed his various works including atlases, his large mural maps, plans of Paris and Madrid, a map of the Holy Lands, a map of the course of the Saint Lawrence River, and a final note advertising useful games for geography and history. This catalog was inserted in his L’introduction à la Géographie (1717).¹³ De Fer’s 1705 catalog (image 2) likewise appeared at the beginning of his L’Atlas Curieux.¹⁴ Other catalogs were separate printed works specifically created to advertise the variety of works available at a given map publishing establishment. Robert Sayer’s extensive (200 pages) 1766 catalog listed The World Described by Herman Moll (d. 1732), several maps in two sheets by the French geographer, Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville, and Thomas Kitchin’s Post Chaise Companion through England and Wales.¹⁵ Sayer also included an advertisement for the forthcoming English atlas, A General Atlas, engraved by John Gibson and based on the work of the French geographer, Didier Robert de Vaugondy and his father, Gilles Robert.

A third form of map promotion involved novel uses of map images to encourage further map use, and thefore sales. For example, the presence of map images in playing cards, jigsaw puzzles, and games can be seen as a way of promoting the sale of geographic images. In the eighteenth century, the philosophy of learning through play helped increase the production of instructional playing cards, games, and puzzles. A dedication in an eighteenth-century geography book encouraged the young reader to “[p]ersuade your parents to reward your diligence with a dissected map (jigsaw puzzle) of England, which you may put together in five minutes, and learn its principal manufacturing towns and counties in one week.”¹⁶ Map games similar to the modern game, Chutes and Ladders, and instructional playing cards also appeared in the eighteenth century.

The burgeoning consumer culture of eighteenth-century Europe invigorated the sale of an increasing diversity of map products. An atlas bound in Moroccan leather embossed with a coat of arms, a city plan for a government official, a dissected map for a child, a wall map suitable to adorn any study or perhaps a map pasted on a privacy screen — by the eighteenth century all could be had at London and Paris establishments, which increasingly turned to a variety of promotion tactics to move their stock.

While the grand project was never fully realized, an atlas of all the principal roads for England and Wales appeared in 1675 under the name Britannia. The promised royal patronage of £500 from the king and £500 “for his Royal Consort” never materialized, but the crown did waive the customs duty on the imported paper Ogilby needed to produce his atlas. Other support appeared in the form of patronage by the Archbishop of Canterbury who paid for the survey of Kent and Sheldon and Sir Thomas Wolstenholme who bore the expense for the survey of Middlesex. A 1672 prospectus seeking additional subscribers explained his intentions, “to lay a Foundation worthy so Eminent a Structure, even such an one as may stand a perfect Model to succeeding Ages; not doubting but by an Encouragement suitable to the worthiness of the Undertaking, to compleat within the space of two Years, a Work whereof if may modestly said; That considering the Actual Survey…nothing of this Nature…was ever yet attempted either at Home or Abroad.”¹⁸

Although the intended six volumes to cover England and Wales never produced more than Britannia, it was such a superior effort that it deserved an equally fine engraved frontispiece. Wenceslas Hollar, an engraver already known for his View of London prior to the fire of 1666, was called upon to produce the frontispiece for this atlas on which he depicted the methods of surveying. Three cherubs hold a strip map of England, a map of London, and a map of Yorkshire. The scene is the gate of London with two men in the foreground observing the surveying in the distance and another studying a globe. Ogilby dedicated the atlas to Charles II and was so bold as to suggest not only that no one prior to him had produced such a work, but also that others would seek to imitate it. “[W]e, who have hitherto, seem’d to truckle under the fame of France and Belgium, for performances of this nature, may presume, by the propinquity of this our design to perfection, that perchance no attempt at first came nearer, to have given such measures to the virtuosi of the world, as foreign princes and states [shall] be glad to imitate.”¹⁹

Three years later, in 1705, de Fer finished his full Atlas Curieux, a work of six books begun in 1700 and intended to cover the world in maps and plans. De Fer placed a catalog of his works on the inside cover. At the end of the list, he emphasized that all his works incorporated the newest observations made by the members of the Académie des Sciences.

The one-sheet catalog was adorned with a view reminiscent of the royal map library with a large armillary sphere, bookcases separated by maps on rollers for easy viewing and globes on pedestals. Several gentlemen appear engaged in conversation under the vaulted fleur de lis ceiling with a central circle depicting the celestial heavens. In the foreground, on either side of the base of a tall central table, sit cherubs pondering geographical concerns while designing a map or reading a book. They are surrounded by surveying and observational instruments and fortification plans much like the ones that would appear in the Atlas Curieux. In the upper corners of the catalog, de Fer acknowledged his patrons with the depiction of the coats of arms of the Dauphin and the new Bourbon king of Spain. While the list provided the necessary promotional details including de Fer’s shop address, “à Paris dans l’isle du Palais sur le quay de l’Orloge a la sphere Royale,” the image associated his work with an intellectually elite pursuit fit for the ministers and governmental officials.

Through image and text, de Fer promoted the crown’s economic and colonial interests in the Americas. The most famous of these vignettes show industrious beavers and the codfish industry. Others show the processing of sugarcane, the mining of silver at Potosi, and plentiful Brazilian forests. Textual passages focused on curiosities such as the Illinois Calumets who smoked a pipe as a sign of great friendship, the fate of the Spaniards who froze to death when caught in the Andes Mountains, or the barbarous Brazilians who had little or no religion and practiced cannibalism.

As in de Fer’s catalogs, the notice of publication of the map in the Journal des Sçavans (June 1698) emphasized not only the decorative quality of the work, but it’s reliance on the newest observations from the “scientists” of the Académie Royale. In this way, de Fer sought to connect his publication of the intellectual pursuit of geography as well as to French colonial aspirations.

A veteran of the South Sea Bubble affair, by 1720 Moll was certainly not a newcomer to colonial promotion. At the famous Tory coffeehouse, Jonathan’s, he and his friends — the scientist, Robert Hooke, the writer, Daniel Defoe, and the pilot and English buccaneer, William Dampier — discussed a common vision of British expansion.²² Moll produced his 1720 map of French encroachments to express the British territorial rights to the lucrative fishing grounds and fur trade along the Niagara River, Newfoundland, Canada, and Hudson’s Bay. He even provided a short “history lesson” of British presence for the disputed area in the Carolinas. For his delineation of British claims in the Carolinas, Moll credited the “Original Draughts of...the Ingenious Mr. Berisford,” who as a representative of the South Carolina Assembly vehemently attacked (in words) French pretensions in the area. South Carolinans feared that the French would stir up trouble with the Cherokee and Iroquois, “old Friends and Allies of the English, who ever esteemed them to be the Bulwark and Security of all their Plantations in North America.”

In 1717, two years after The World Described first appeared, Moll advertised a new edition, which like the earlier atlas contained maps in “two sheets, all composed and done according to ye newest and exact Observations....” His advertisment blasted his competition, for a struggle for “territory” also existed in the mapmaking industry. “Since ye beginning of this new Set of Maps, now completely finish’d several ignorant Pretenders have started up, and with great Shew and Noise frequently advertised their trifling Performances; calling them Cheap, curious, useful and correct: As to ye first Epithet, they are really dear at any Price, in ye second Place every body may see they are Confusedly and Poorly engraven; as for their usefulness, it tends only to lead people into Errors and Dangers; Lastly they are so far from being Correct, that the fundamental or Projection of their Principal maps is Notoriously False.”²³

Despite legitimate concerns that the map could equally aid the French enemy, pirated versions did not appear in either London or Paris for nearly twenty years. After Philadelphia witnessed the signing of the Declaration of Independence, political alliances changed, and British map publishers became the potential enemy “pirates.” The London engraver and map seller William Faden produced a copy of the 1756 map with the official sanction of the British Act of Parliament dated 12 March 1776. He touted its authority with promotional rhetoric such as the “seal of approval” by colonial merchants, who denounced earlier maps as “very imperfect and no dependence to be had thereon.” Fisher’s work was added to Faden’s North American Atlas (1777), a great source of printed maps for the British during the Revolution.

The map also appeared in atlases published by John Bennet and as an inset map for Andrew Dury’s Plan of Philadelphia (November 1776). Fisher’s 1756 map remained largely unchanged and continued to include the list of pilots and ships’ masters who in effect were now recommending the map to the invading British forces. During the Revolution, British officers, initially served by colonial maps, began their own draughts — of the Atlantic coastline and its strategic rivers and inlets — many of which would appear in Joseph F.W. Des Barres’ Atlantic Neptune (1779).²⁵

These games taught and entertained in the Lockean fashion of “learning through play.” Wallis’s popular Tour through England and Wales, provided directions along the right and left margins for up to six players. “The pyramids are supposed to be the Travellers who make the Tour; each Pyramid having 4 Counters of the same color belonging to it, which are called markers or servants.” With London as the ultimate goal, the game carried the players and their servants across the country with 117 possible stops. Occasional hazards added to the entertainment; for example, the directions for a stop on number 89 read, “Isle of Man — This Island is situated in the Irish Sea, from some part of which the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, may be seen at once. The traveler will be shipwrecked on this Island, and thereby lose his chance of the game.” Other locations might not inflict such a high toll, but delay a player briefly; Salisbury, for example, “a city and bishop’s see” encouraged the player to “[s]tay one turn here to see its beautiful cathedral, and take notice of a stream of water flowing through every street.” A player landing on number 35 (Oxford) simply learned that this fine city and bishop’s see is “famous for its University, which is esteemed the most noble of any in Europe.” (Unless you are a Cambridge man.)

In addition to their educational benefit, these works promoted other works of a similar nature. Wallis invited his audience (or their parents) to his “Map Warehouse” at “No. 16 Ludgate Street Where may be had upon the same plan, a tour round the world & another through Europe.” By the early nineteenth century John Wallis and his son, Edward, would become one of the main providers of stylish juvenile board games of various types, including geographical games. Wallis declared himself the “Original Manufacturer of dissected maps,” (the forerunner of today’s jigsaw puzzles). Such games not only provided hours of entertainment but helped to foster an interest in maps and geography that would in turn help support Wallis’s other map publications.

1. John Ogilby, Britannia (London, 1675). Newberry Library call number, Case +G 45005.638
2. Nicolas de Fer, Catalog des ouvrages du Sr. De Fer jusqu’en l’année 1705, in L’Atlas Curieux (Paris, 1705). Newberry Library call number: Ayer 135 F4 1705
3. Nicolas de Fer, L’Amerique, divisee selon letendue de ses principales parties, et dont les points principaux sont placez sur les observations de Messrs de l’Academie Royale des Sciences. Newberry Library call number: Novacco 8F2
4. Herman Moll, “A New Map of the North Parts of America claimed by France under ye names of Louisiana, Mississipi, Canada and New France with ye adjoining territories of England and Spain, 1720,” in The World Described (London, 1715). Newberry Library call number: Andrew McNally III Gift, Procite 373
5. William Faden, “A Chart of Delaware Bay and River, Containing a full and exact description of the Shores, Creeks, Harbours, Soundings, Shoals, Sands and Bearings of the most considerable Land Marks from the Cape to Philadelphia,” in North American Atlas (London, 1777). Newberry Library call number: Map 7C 4
6. John Wallis, Tour Through England and Wales: A New Geographical Pastime (London, 1794). Newberry Library call number: Map 4F G5751 A9 1794 W3

¹ John Wallis, Tour Through England and Wales: A Geographical Pastime (London, 1794).

² Hermon Moll, The World Described (London, 1715).

³ Moll, The World Described, title page.

⁴ Mireille Pastoureau, “Contrefaçon et plagiat des cartes de géographie et des atlas français de la fin du XVIe au début du XVIIIe siècle,” in Les Presses Grises: La Contrefaçon du Livre (XVIe-XIXe siècles), ed. François Moreau (Paris, 1988), 280.

⁵ Mary Pedley, “The Map Trade in Paris, 1650-1825,” Imago Mundi, 33 (1981): 33-45; Mireille Pastoureau, “Contrefaçon,” 280; Catherine Delano-Smith and Roger J.P. Kain, English Maps: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1992).

⁶ Moll, The World Described.

⁷ Nicolas de Fer, L’Amerique (Paris, 1705).

⁸ Sarah Tyacke, London Map-Sellers 1660-1720: A collection of advertisements for maps placed in the London Gazette 1668-1719 with biographical notes of the map sellers (Tring: Map Collector, 1978), 3, #2.

⁹ Tyacke, 5, #10.

¹⁰ John Ogilby, Britannia, facsimile edition (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum LTD, 1970), Introduction.

¹¹ Delano-Smith and Kain, English Maps, 170-171.

¹² John Seller, Proposal, Atlas Anglicanus, British Library Map Collection, Maps 187.L.1.23.

¹³ Nicolas de Fer, L’Introduction à la Géographie (Paris, 1717).

¹⁴ Nicolas de Fer, Catalog des Ouvrages du Sr. De Fer jusqu’en l’Année 1705, in L’Atlas Curieux (Paris, 1705).

¹⁵ Robert Sayer, New and Enlarged Catalog (London, 1766).

¹⁶ Jill Shefrin, “‘Make it a Pleasure and Not a Task:’ Educating Games for Children in Georgian England,” Princeton University Library Chronicle, 60, 1 (Winter 1999): 251.

¹⁷ See Tyacke, London Map-Sellers, and Ogilby, Britannia, facsimile edition, for information on the life and work of John Ogilby.

¹⁸ see n. 12.

¹⁹ John Ogilby, Britannia (London, 1675), dedicatory page, Newberry Library Map Collection, Case +G 45005.638.

²⁰ See Pedley, “The Map Trade in Paris,” and Mireille Pastoureau, Les Atlas Français, XVIe-XVIIe siècles (Paris, 1984), 167-172, for information on the life and work of Nicolas de Fer.

²¹ See Dennis Reinhartz, The Cartographer and the Literati — Herman Moll and His Intellectual Circle (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1997) for information on the life and works of Herman Moll; also see William P. Cumming, The Southeast in Early Maps, third edition, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

²² Dennis Reinhartz, “Cartography, Literature, and Empire: Herman Moll, his maps, and his friends,” Mercator’s World Features available at http://www.mercatormag.com/402_cart.html accessed October 2001.

²³ Moll, The World Described, title page.

²⁴ See Pennsylvania on Paper: an exhibition at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1977).

²⁵ Joseph F.W. Des Barres, The Atlantic Neptune (London, 1779).

²⁶ See Linda Hannas, “When Maps were…cut into pieces,” Map Collector 12, (Septermber 1980): 18-21; Linda Hannas, The English Jigsaw Puzzle, 1760-1890 (London: Wayland, 1972); J.H. Plumb, “The New World of Children in Eighteenth-century England,” in Neil Mckendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb, eds., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 286-315; and Shefrin, “Make it a Pleasure and Not a Task,” 251-275 for information on John Wallis and his map games.