94 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
The eighteenth-century geopolitical contest between
the French and the British in North America produced
a steady stream of maps. Among the most influential of
these was John Mitchell’s “Map of the British Colonies
in North America.” Mitchell was born in Virginia, was
educated in Edinburgh, and practiced medicine in the
colonies before returning to Britain in 1746. Thereafter
he developed a keen interest in North American
geography, and especially the strategic position of
the Ohio Valley.
In the early 1750s the earl of Halifax, who presided
over the British Board of Trade, asked Mitchell to
compile a map that would help defend British claims to
the Ohio Valley. Mitchell responded with a massive map
measuring 4½ feet by 6½ feet. He detailed both physical
and human geography in a way that was comprehensive
and thoroughly British in its perspective.
A bold red line follows the Mississippi River before
turning northeast through Lake Michigan and then east
toward the Saint Lawrence Seaway. This line marked
the British interpretation of their territorial borders, as
laid down in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. With this line,
the British claimed all of the Ohio Territory and much
of the Great Lakes. Mitchell substantiated this British
claim on the map itself, as shown on the next page.
Just east of the Mississippi River, he identified several
longstanding English settlements in order to buttress
English sovereignty. He then reinforced those territorial
claims by pointing to the presence in the same region
of Native American tribes that had either allied with the
British or signed treaties with them. All of Mitchell’s
annotations were designed to limit French claims to the
area east of the Mississippi River.
The French, however, asserted a boundary far to the
east, marked on the map by a thick yellow line. The vast
region between the red and yellow boundaries formed
the heart of the conflict between the French and the
British. In fact, by the time Mitchell issued the first
edition of his map in 1755, the two nations had gone
to war over this territory. The British consulted the map
throughout the French and Indian War, and their victory
ended the French presence in North America altogether.
Yet this British dominance would not last. By the 1770s
the British were again at war, this time with the colonists
themselves. At the end of the war this very copy of
Mitchell’s map was used by Britain’s chief negotiator,
Sir Richard Oswald, to establish the boundaries of the
new United States at the Treaty of Paris.
INDEPENDENCE
John Mitchell, “A Map of the British
Colonies in North America ...,” 1775
[1755]