These marginal images are a representation of “ownership
and control, as well as of information and accurate (often
inaccurate) knowledge about the continent.”
by the heroic image of the Archduke Charles (a young Charles III)
of 1784 is one of the first English maps to display the boundaries
on a horse, after his landing near Barcelona in 1 705. It is striking,
of the newly recognized country after the signing of the Treaty of
however, to note that the map is dedicated to Philip V. This edition
Peace in 1783 and its ratification in 1784 that ended the American
was published in the late 1730s after a previous map by Pierre
War of Independence (1775–1783; plate 39). It was published
Mortier, dedicated to Charles III, published around 1710, and as
originally with the title The British Colonies in North America
Peter Barber explains, “In the middle of the eighteenth century it
in 1777, thus during the American Revolutionary War, and it
did not make commercial sense for a publisher to alter radically the
was regularly revised and updated as new information became
plate of an old map that was still selling reasonably well in response
available. Therefore, Faden’s sequence of these maps illustrates the
to changing political circumstances.” Thus the map was reissued
political development of this country. Of the various editions, this
with minor differences and “without even a change of the face or
exemplar has been identified as a fourth state in which the words
(Habsburg) symbolism, a generation after it had been first published
“of 1784” are added in the title, and it is dated 1785. Other than
by Pieter Mortier and long after Barcelone had fallen to the Bourbon
these changes the cartouche is the same as in the first edition of
forces and the map had been rededicated to Philip V.”
1777. The elements that form it have been interpreted by Clarke
The idea of the cartouche being a “visual register in which a map’s
as a celebration of British colonization and dominion in North
cultural meaning is suggested”—to put it in the words of G.N.G.
America. Two very different groups are portrayed in a scene that
Clarke—is emphasized according to this scholar in eighteenth-
alludes to the wealthy European industries built in the New World
century British maps of America, and especially in Jefferys’s (fig. 12)
with American products and labor: the white British merchants,
and Faden’s atlases. These marginal images are a representation of
who appear comfortable and at ease, control the proceedings,
“ownership and control, as well as of information and accurate (often
while the native (black) workers are in positions of subservience:
inaccurate) knowledge about the continent”; thus they have to be
carrying a basket on the shoulder or leaning over a barrel being
understood as “the pictorial equivalent (a comparative image) of the
prepared for export. The clear difference in skin color of these
way the land is portrayed in the map ‘proper.’” The cartouches mirror
two groups indicates the dependence of the economy on African
the map. As “icons of possession … cartouches give both ballast and
slaves in America, and that slavery was still in practice despite the
direction (visual, narrative, symbolic) to this political frame.”
declarations of rights and freedom.
William Faden’s map of The United States of North America:
Moreover, as Clarke assures, “The framing device in which
the title appears is also significant.” Covering the side of a hill, it
with the British and Spanish Territories, According to the Treaty,
34