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Henry Popple's Map of the British Empire in
North America (London, 1733)
Mark Babinski
Edited by Matthew H. Edney
Narrative
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| Introduction |
Henry Popple's 1733 map is one of the two most important large-scale colonial maps
of North America (the other being John Mitchell's map of 1755). George
Washington, who drew a number of maps himself, owned a copy of Popple's Key
map (Griffin 1897). John Adams, the second American President, wrote in 1776 that
"Popples Map is […] the largest I ever saw, and the most distinct." [note 1]
Benjamin Franklin ordered "two setts of Popple's Mapps of N. America one bound
the other in Sheets" for the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1746 and then "another of
Popple's Maps of North America, large, on Rollers" in 1752 (Franklin 1959- , 3: 77
and 4: 322-24). He referred to Popple's map in his Poor Richard almanac for 1748
[note 2]. Charles Carroll, revolutionary leader from Maryland, signer of the
Declaration of Independence and member of the Board of War, owned a copy
(Papenfuse & Coale 1982, 34). [note 3]. Thus, Popple's map is truly an important
piece of Americana - a fundamental centerpiece of any serious collection of North
American maps.
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| Biographical Details |
As to Henry Popple himself, nothing is known about his early years. At a November
7, 1721 meeting of the Board of Trade and Plantations it was "Order'd that M:r
Henry Popple should supply the next Vacancy which might happen" in the position
of Clerk to the Board (Board of Trade Journals). He had to wait almost 6 years but
was finally appointed as Clerk to the Board on April 18, 1727. [note 4] However,
four months later on August 12, 1727 he resigned from office having "obtain'd an
Imployment inconsistent with His Business" at the Board (Board of Trade Journals).
The same year he drew his small, 667 mm x 518 mm, manuscript map entitled A
Map of the ENGLISH and FRENCH Possessions on the Continent of North America.
This early map does not cover an area as far south as his map of 1733. There are a
number of other geographical differences between the manuscript map and the later
engraved one. Probably the most interesting is the representation of rivers north of
the Missouri and west of the Mississippi.
From 1728 through 1739 Henry Popple represented as Agent various West Indies
governments before the Board. In that capacity he represented Governor Richard
Fitzwilliam of the Bahama Islands in a Complaint brought against the Governor in
1736 by Chaloner Jackson, Collector of Customs on the islands. Fitzwilliam,
unhappy with Jackson's accusations that he had illegally imported goods into the
Bahamas, not only threatened to "have him whipped round the town" but then
"taking him by the collar, held and beat him till his stick broak [sic] short in his
hand." (Calendar). This memorable case involving Popple lasted 3 years.
Henry Popple also served as the Under-Treasurer to the Household of Queen
Caroline. He died in Bordeaux, France on September 27, 1743. [note 5] He is not
known to have authored any other maps than the two described here - the manuscript
of 1727 and the engraved of 1733.
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| The Map's Origins in the
Board of Trade and
Plantations |
The map may have come about because of Henry Popple's short period of work at
the Board of Trade and Plantations - from April to August 1727. During that period
the Board was hearing a boundary dispute between New Hampshire and
Massachusetts Bay. A number of Board meetings were held on that matter in June
and July of 1727, with no settlement of the problem. A few years later, just 7 months
before Popple's map was published in December 1733, a boundary Petition from
John Rindge, agent for New Hampshire, was read at a May 16, 1733 meeting of the
Board. With his Petition Rindge enclosed a Map of the Southern Part of New
Hampshire (Rindge 1733). This map or an earlier "mapp of that Province and course
of Meremack River which parts the Masachusets [sic] and New Hampshire"
forwarded in 1730 to Alured Popple by Colonel David Dunbar, Surveyor General of
H. M. Woods in America, on behalf of New Hampshire (Dunbar 1730) may have
been later used by Henry Popple for his own map. The need for accurate boundary
maps would have become apparent to Popple. His 1727 manuscript map shows New
Hampshire's borders reaching Wenipisiocho Lake on the north and following the
Merimack River on the south. His later engraved map restricts New Hampshire to a
smaller area on both the north and the south - placing Wenipisiocho Lake, called
Winnisposiokie Pond by Rindge, in the center of the Province of Main - under the
jurisdiction of Massachusetts. British schemes involving French and Spanish
territories, in which the Board played a role, [note 6] would have also made apparent
to Popple the need for inaccurate political maps [note 7], as instruments supporting a
British policy of territorial expansion. In 1726 Dodun, the Controller General of the
French Company of the Indies, wrote in a Mémoire about the implementation of this
expansionist policy - "In 1725 the English undertook two enterprises equally
dangerous for our colony [Louisiana]. One is a considerable establishment on the
Ohio River by means of which they can come down to the Mississippi in four days
and take themselves to the mouth of the Wabash River and put the Illinois behind
them. […] The other enterprise which they undertook was to send a number of
traders and a quantity of merchandise to the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations which
are the center of our colony […] we may expect that they will return and as soon as
they are in control of these two nations they will have all the lower part of our
colony destroyed when they wish to do so." [note 8] When the Natchez Indian
uprising erupted against the French on November 28, 1729, with the resulting war in
Louisiana lasting through the end of 1731 (Giraud 1991), the English must have tried
to take advantage of the situation. Maps were needed.
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In June 1730 the Privy Council issued instructions to the Governor of South Carolina
to "transmit unto Us and to Our Commissioners for Trade and Plantations by ye first
oppertunity [sic] a map, with an exact description of the whole Province under your
Government, with ye several plantations upon it, and of ye fortifications; and as
also, of the bordering Spanish and Indian settlements." (Board of Trade Journals,
Item No. 281(ii); Labaree 1935, No. 629). The same instructions, except the request
for a map of the bordering "Spanish" settlements, were sent to the Governor of
North Carolina in December 1730. (Cain 1984-88, 7: 591-613; Labaree 1935).
Maybe it was then that Henry Popple saw the opportunity to follow up on his
manuscript map of 1727 with a commercially oriented venture: publishing a large
engraved wall map of North America. It certainly did not hurt that Henry's brother
[note 9] Alured Popple was the Secretary of the Board of Trade and that he could
elicit some measure of support from the Commissioners, including access to maps in
the possession of the Board. This was later expressed on the map itself in the form of
an engraved annotation - "Mr. POPPLE undertook this MAP with the Approbation
of the Right Honourable the LORDS COMMISSIONERS of TRADE and
PLANTATIONS; and great Care has been taken by comparing all the Maps, Charts
and Observations that could be found, especially the Authentick Records & Actual
Surveys transmitted to their LORDSHIPS, by the Governors of the British
Plantations, and Others, to correct the many Errors committed in former Maps".
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When compared to his manuscript map the engraved map's extension of the
Pennsylvania boundaries westwards almost to Fort Niagara and the abrupt
termination of the French-controlled Hohio River just south of Lake Erie clearly
show that Henry Popple learned the importance of political maps [see note 2 and
note 6]. His father William Popple (III), the second Secretary of the Board of Trade,
made an oblique distinction between accurate maps and political maps in an official
letter sent to Daniel Pulteney in 1720. William Popple wrote: "Sir: The Lords
commissioners for trade and plantations command me to send you the inclos'd copy
of a Map of Canço Harbour drawn by Capt. Young upon the place, which he did for
his own use without any view to the disputes between France and us. And therefore it
is to be suppos'd that he has done it without partiality." Later his brother Alured
Popple, the third Secretary of the Board of Trade, must have told him about the angry
letter from Patrick Gordon, Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, read at the
October 4, 1732 Board meeeting just a year before Popple's map was published. In
that letter Gordon complained about Delisle's 1718 map of Louisiana and about John
Senex having placed it into his New General Atlas of 1721 "without any alteration
or restriction". [note 10] The resulting "alteration" of the sources of Ohio River on
the plate for Sheet 6 of Popple's map indicates that he heard the message. The new
delineation of New Hampshire and the Province of Main and the later corrections to
Savannah River separating Georgia from South Carolina show that Henry Popple
also understood the importance of accurate boundary maps. His improvements in the
delineation of Nova Scotia/Acadie, which caused so much trepidation for the English
Commissaries in 1755 [note 11] yet made John Green comment that the "first
tolerable Draught to be met with of Nova Scotia is that which Mr. Popple has given
us" [note 12], show that Popple also tried to make his map geographically accurate.
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| Publishing the Map |
Henry Popple announced "Proposals […] for Printing by Subscription, a Map of
North-America" on April 6, 1731 [note 13], promising delivery by "Lady-day
[March 25th] 1732", but the map was not published until December 1733 [see note
9]. At the announced price of four Guineas (£4.4s) it was expensive and apparently
did not sell well. To put the high cost of the map in perspective one should compare
it with Henry Popple's 1727 starting annual salary of £40 as Clerk to the Board of
Trade and Plantations [see note 4] or with the cost of £3.18s for the large folio Atlas
Maritimus & Commercialis of 1728, containing 54 maps and about five hundred
pages of text ([Defoe] 1728b; Moore (1960), No. 501). [note 14] When William
Henry Toms and Samuel Harding took over from Henry Popple as proprietors of the
map in August 1739 [note 15; note 16] they announced that the "Map has not yet
been exported, and but few printed off, by reason of its former large Price" [see note
16]. To increase sales Toms and Harding cut the price of the map virtually in half.
However, it was really the onset of the War of Jenkins' Ear, in which not only the
English but also Colonial Americans were heavily involved, 1739-1743, that
propelled the popularity of the map. This explains why State 7 of the large 20-Sheet
map, sold between August 1739 and 1745, is the most common (refer to the
statistical summary). [note 17] Toms and Harding were quite active in publishing a
number of maps relating to this war with Spain.
Around 1746 the ownership of Popple's map passed into the hands of Stephen
Austen and Thomas Willdey. The map did not stay long in their possession as
Thomas Willdey died in early 1748 (Tyacke 1978) and Stephen Austen died in
December 1750 (Plomer 1932). Eventually the map was acquired by John Boydell, a
well-known London engraver and publisher, who advertised its new printing in The
London Evening-Post of May 28-30, 1754 and cut its price by half a Guinea. [note
18] The large 20-Sheet map may have remained on the market long after John
Mitchell's Map of the British and French Dominions in North America was
published in 1755. This can be inferred from a July 5, 1760 Covens & Mortier
advertisement in the Amsterdamsche Courant in which both the 8-Sheet Dutch
edition of Mitchell's map and the 7-Sheet Dutch edition of Popple's map were
offered for sale [note 19], and from a Cox & Berry circa 1772 Boston catalogue in
which "Popple's Map of America" was made available (Winans 1981). As late as
1893 Popple's map was used as evidence in settling various land disputes (Labrador
Company v. the Queen, in the Privy Council, 1893) (Penfold 1974, no. 1667).
Popple's Key map may have retained an even longer life than the 20-Sheet map. The
plate for the Key map was initially in the hands of Henry Popple (1734/5-39), then
Toms and Harding (1739-45), next Austen and Willdey (1746-50?), later Boydell
(1754) and eventually it became the property of David Steel [note 20]. Steel used the
plate to publish 3 new editions of the map in c.1775-c.1776, at the time of the
American Revolution, not only with his own imprint but also with a new dedication
to the King and a new title at top. Finally, the plate appears to have passed into the
hands of the London firm of Mount, Page & Mount. They were probably the
publishers of the last edition of the Key map (State 9) - issued with David Steel's
earlier modifications but without his imprint.
Only one copy of State 1 of Popple's 20-Sheet map has been located, at the
Newberry Library in Chicago. A detailed analysis of this copy is provided in Note
21, with the reasoning behind my speculation that State 1a also exists.
States 1 and 2 of the large map differ from one another only in the imprint on Sheet
20. However, State 3 introduces a major geographical modification on Sheet 10. A
small engraved pastedown covers a part of Georgia on the four located copies of that
State 3. It shows not only the new settlements in the Colony of Georgia (created by
royal charter of 1732) but also quite a different river configuration than on the earlier
Sheet 10. This pastedown must have been prepared after General Oglethorpe, the
Colony's leader, returned to England from Georgia in June 1734. On July 20, 1734
Oglethorpe met with the King and they jointly reviewed "several Charts and Curious
Drawings relating to the new Settlement of Georgia, with which his Majesty seem'd
highly pleased." [note 22] It would be reasonable to presume that around that time
Oglethorpe communicated these "Charts and Curious Drawings" to Henry Popple
so that corrections could be made on his recently published semi-official map,
distributed to colonial governments by the Board of Trade and Plantations. Louis De
Vorsey, Jr. was the first to identify the State 3 pastedown. However, he speculates
incorrectly that it represents the "final" state of Sheet 10 (De Vorsey 1986).
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In State 4 of the large map the pastedown patch was discarded and the plate for Sheet
10 of the map was re-engraved to show the proper new configuration for Georgia.
The new Sheet 10 differs from the State 3 pastedown in the addition of a new
southern branch of the Alatamaha River and a new dotted road, not present on the
pastedown, connecting Fort Argyle to Pallachoccolas Fort and then progressing
farther towards Combahee River. The new road was laid out in 1733 and in
December of the same year General Oglethorpe wrote about it in a letter to the
Trustees of the Colony. [note 23] States 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 of the large 20-Sheet map
differ from one another only in the imprints and the presence or lack of sheet
enumeration.
A large number of copies were located with two manuscript additions on Sheet 6 -
"Cape May" and "Cape Hinlopen" - all in the same hand. This leads me to
conclude that it was either Toms or Seale who added these annotations, rather than
purchasers of the map. These place-names were never engraved on the 20-Sheet
map. However, they appear later in State 3 of the Key map and on all Dutch, French
and German copies of the Key map. On the C&M 4-Sheet map these two place-names do not appear in States 1 or 2 and only "C. May" is added in State 3.
Popple's Key map in State 1 reflects the new Georgia configuration shown on State 4
of the 20-Sheet map and it also has the gridlines and enumeration corresponding to
the sheets of the larger map. An attempt to engrave enumeration on the sheets of the
larger map was made in State 4c. Therefore, it is reasonable to date State 1 of the
Key map to late 1734 or 1735; it was not published in 1733. The Key map in State 1
is the most common of the 9 States of this map (refer to the statistical summary).
This is probably due to the greater popularity of that inexpensive single-sheet map
priced at only 2 shillings when compared with the high cost of the large map between
1733 and 1739, when Henry Popple was the proprietor of the plates. When Toms and
Harding took over the ownership of the map in 1739 they initially made no
modifications to the Key map beyond adding their imprint in State 2. However, after
George Foster compared his Seat of War in the West Indies with Popple's "Miniature
Map" in the February 22, 1740 issue of The Daily Post, disparaging the Key map for
not showing "Cumana, the Caraccas, Coro, Rio de la Hacha, Sancta Martha,
Conception, Cartago, Port de Cavallos, the Logwood Creeks, Nicoya, Granada,
Leon, San Salvador, and other noted Places in Terra firma and New Spain only, that
yet are in our much smaller one", Toms added a number of new place-names on the
Key map in State 3.
The large 20-Sheet map in atlas form being unwieldy to use, even with the Key map
as a guide, a printed leaf captioned "The Contents of each Sheet of the Twenty Plates
of Mr. Popple's Map of America" was put out. There are two States of this
"Contents of each Sheet" leaf, with printed surfaces of about 145mm x 230mm.
They differ slightly in punctuation/spacing and in State 2 the sheet enumeration is
corrected (there are two sheets enumerated "XII" in State 1). About one in three
copies of the large map reviewed here comes with this "Contents of each Sheet"
leaf; it is not rare. What is rare is a separately published marketing advertisement of
the map on a similar size leaf, captioned "Contents of Mr. Popple's Map of
America", that appears only in a few bound copies. It is hard to establish when
exactly this marketing advertisement was published but Toms and Harding's
February 1745 and July 1745 advertisements of the map in the London newspapers
contain very similar text [see note 17].
The typical coloring of fully colored copies of both the Key map and the 20-sheet
map is described best by a contemporary manuscript legend on the end-paper
affixing the Key map to the binding in the King George III copy [census no.C18] at
the British Library: "Green - Indian Countrys. Red - English. Yellow - Spanish. Blue
- French. Purple - Dutch." The political use of color is quite visible on fully colored
copies where blue, for French controlled territories, is sparingly used and limited to a
narrow strip along the Mississippi river from the Gulf of Mexico to the fork of the
Ohio River, coastal areas of Louisiana, the north bank of the St. Lawrence River
between Lake Ontario and the Emboucheure, St. John's Island, Cape Breton Islands
and Anticoste Island. Toms and Harding sold the map uncolored for £1.16s.6d
"Bound in the Nature of an Atlas" [see note 16] and for "Two Guineas [£2.2s]
bound and colour'd" [see note 17]. They advertised that "the small Map, (design'd
by Mr. Popple as an Index) … is given gratis on buying" a bound copy [see note 16].
Thus, a fully colored bound copy, with the included Key map probably also fully
colored, cost only 5s.6d more than an uncolored copy - a mere 15% increase in price.
On virtually all colored copies of Popple's 20-Sheet map and most colored copies of |
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However, at the time of Popple's map the reality was that it was the Spanish and not
the Americans or English who controlled this area: "since the Year 1722, when five
Spanish Frigates, whereof two carried 44 Guns each, came into the Bay, took or
burnt 12 English Ships belonging to New England, New York, and the Colonies
thereabouts, and burnt all the Logwood they could find" [see note 25]. A year before
the onset of the War of Jenkins' Ear Admiral Charles Wager commented "that since
the English have been driven out of the Bay of Campechy by the Spaniards they have
carry [sic] on the Trade of Logwood Cutting in the Bay of Honduras." [note 26]
Nevertheless, American and English ships continued to visit the Bay of Campechy in
search of logwood, despite, as put by Galfridus Gray a merchant from that area, "the
risques run to get it, since the bay has been taken from us." The Spanish often
captured these American and English ships in the Bay of Campeachy and even
attacked the well-armed New Englanders in the Bay of Honduras. [see note 24]
Thus, Popple's and later Toms/Harding's coloring of the map on the western side of
the Yucatan peninsula reflects only the weak British claim and not the factual
situation. Buache's map Golfe du Mexique [note 27], copied in 1740 from Popple,
shows this new reality - by coloring in red a region in the Bay of Honduras rather
than in the Bay of Campechy. Regardless, British and American claims persisted for
a long time after the publication of Popple's map - around 1762 John Gibson
engraved the following annotation on his New and Correct Map of the West Indies
included in the American Gazetteer - "The Bay of Campeche abounds in Logwood
which the Spaniards endeavour to keep to themselves and is the Cause of much
Bloodshed & quarrels between them and the Engl.h " [note 28; note 29].
Popple's large map shows dotted lines going across the Great Lakes and entering
rivers on the west sides of Lakes Erie and Illinois. These are "the Passages
discovered by the French from Quebec for a Communication with their Settlements
about the Emboucheur of the River Mississipi" as advertised in the April 6, 1731
"Proposals by Mr. Henry Popple, for Printing by Subscription, a Map of North-America" [see note 13]. The British were concerned about these French
communication lines. On March 19, 1718 the Board of Trade and Plantations
requested in a letter to William Keith, Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, that he
provide information on these French routes "as soon as possible". The Board asked
Keith for advice on "what methods may be most proper to be taken for preventing
the inconveniencies to which H. M. Plantations on the continent of America and the
trade of this Kingdom may be subject by such a communication between the French
settlements". Keith's February 16, 1719 response contained detailed descriptions of
three such routes between Mount Real (Montreal) and the Mechasippi (Mississippi)
River. [note 30] Apparently, these descriptions were provided to Keith by Mr. Logan,
described later by Patrick Gordon as "a gentleman of good literature and large
experience." Gordon, the next Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, thought the
information on these French travel routes so important that with his March 15, 1731
letter to the Board (Gordon 1731), read on October 4, 1732, he enclosed an exact
copy of the "paper drawn up in 1718 by Mr. Logan" for Keith (Logan 1718).
Through his brother Alured, Henry Popple must have received either Keith's or
Logan's descriptions and incorporated them into his map. The French travel route
along the Oubach R. ou R. S.t Jerome, starting on Sheet 6, indicates that the process
of engraving the plates for Popple's map must have been lengthy. On Sheet 5 the
small section of this river is named Ouback R. and does not have the dotted line. On
Sheet 9 the river is not named at all and the dotted line starts only at the junction of
the Oubach/Ouback and Hohio rivers - as if though the engraver was unable to
determine which of the two rivers is the Oubach. This probably would not have
happened if the plates were engraved in a rapid succession, one after the other, by
the same engraver.
Covens and Mortier published a copy of Popple's map in 1741. Their 7-sheet set
consists of a 4-Sheet reduction of Popple's 20-Sheet map, a Key map, a sheet with
the 17 inset maps, and a sheet with the 4 views. The set appears in Delisle's Atlas
Nouveau published in Amsterdam by Covens and Mortier as late as the French and
Indian War (Koeman 1969, 45-86). The date of the first edition of these Dutch maps
after Popple is sometimes mistakenly given as 1737. Around 1746 Covens and
Mortier published a Supplement Pour Servir au Catalogue des Cartes
Geographiques to update their 1738 stock catalogue of maps (Krogt 1992). The
Supplement lists by year of publication 90 maps published by Covens and Mortier
between 1738 and 1746 and it dates the first Dutch copies of Popple's map to 1741.
The earliest advertisement of the 7-sheet set by Covens & Mortier appeared in the
Amsterdamsche Courant on February 6, 1742 [see note 19] - confirming a late 1741
publication date.
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Georges Louis Le Rouge, Johann Michael Probst and Johann (Jean) Michael Back
(in State 1) copied Popple's Key map without major changes. However, Covens &
Mortier's 4-Sheet map in State 3 and Back's Key map in State 2 contain significant
geographical modifications to Popple's delineation of North America. Both of these
maps resulted from the onset of the French and Indian War. State 3b of Covens &
Mortier's 4-Sheet map not only shows a new course of the Ohio River and a different
configuration of the Great Lakes but it also marks the place and provides the July 9,
1755 date of the Battle of the Wilderness. I speculate that a hypothetical earlier State
3a of this C&M 4-Sheet map exists without the Battle of the Wilderness annotations
(but with the new course of the Ohio River) - because the first advertisement of this
"nieuw gemaekt" map appeared in the Amsterdamsche Courant already on August 2,
1755 [see note 19]. This would have been too early for the information about the
battle to have reached Amsterdam. The later editions of these Dutch copies of
Popple's map appeared not only in Delisle's Atlas Nouveau but were also sold
separately. An advertisement leaf in a circa 1757 edition of this atlas at Yale [note
31] announces that the maps were available in loose sheets, segmented on
taffeta/satin, or pasted on linen with rollers in the form of wall map. The Probst copy
of Popple's Key map was published in 1782, almost half a century after the British
original was engraved and the same year that Middleton's copy of Popple's Fall of
Niagara view appeared in a revised edition of A New and Complete System of
Geography. [note 32] Popple's Fall of Niagara view was copied even longer than his
map - a copy of the view attributed to Robert Hancock was published by Laurie and
Whittle from 1794 to as late as 1813 (Lane 1993, No. 21) and a simplified version of
the view appeared on a map of North America in James Bell's A System of
Geography Popular and Scientific published as late as 1840.
An interesting unrecorded Map or Plan of the mouth of Alatamaha: River by John
Barnwell was located at Columbia University in the course of my research on the
Popple map - it is described here in note 33. This Barnwell map, or some other in a
series of similar small maps drawn by him in 1721-1722, may have been used by
Popple as the source for a large island in the mouth of the Alatamaha River - starting
in State 3 of the 20-Sheet map. The island is not shown on Barnwell's two large 1721
maps of southeastern North America (Cumming 1998, Nos. 184, 184a). In addition,
an untitled manuscript map corresponding almost exactly to Sheet 6 of Popple's large
map was found at the Library of Congress in the Rochambeau Map Collection. It is
described in note 34. I speculate that this may be the original manuscript map of
Sheet 6 drawn for Popple by Clement Lempriere [see note 12].
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| Contemporary Comments |
One must address the matter of contemporary criticism of Popple's map. Critical
comments by George Foster and Thomas Gardner in 1740 are easily explained by the
appearance that year of Foster's map. Foster's Seat of War had to compete with
Popple's Key map in the same crowded London market. Emanuel Bowen's tabular
critiques engraved on his maps Sequel to the Seat of War [note 35] and Vast Atlantic
Ocean, comparing those maps "with M.r Popples great Map of the British Empire in
America", were merely plagiarism of Foster for whom Bowen engraved the Seat of
War. Critical comments in 1755 by the English Commissaries [see note 11] dealing
with the boundaries of Nova Scotia were political - due to the nature of the
negotiations with the French. Comments by Bellin [note 36] are more serious but
only because of his stature as an esteemed cartographer and the lengthy period of
time during which he expressed them. No map of America published in those days
was completely accurate. It was somewhat disingenuous for Bellin to criticize
Popple's map as being inaccurate yet at the same time copy his Florida and Georgia.
As John Green wrote in 1753, Bellin may have been "a professed Critic's [sic] on
Mr. Popple's Map" but in his own 1749 Carte du Golphe du Mexique he made a
"greater Error […] than what Mr. Bellin pretends to have found in Mr. Popple's
Map." Possibly stung by other earlier such commentary Bellin felt compelled to
explain. In an April 20, 1752 letter to the Royal Society in London [note 37] he wrote
that his negative comments were made with only one purpose - "d'approcher le plus
qu il est possible de La Verité" - to get as close as possible to the Truth. But as to the
"Truth" about Popple's map, another quite different contemporary appraisal came
from Le Rouge, who wrote in his Introduction a la Geographie, 1748: "L'Amérique
Septentrionale de Pople est fort estimée en Angleterre"; Popple's North America is
highly regarded in England. Even Bellin, in his critical 1749 Observations sur la
Carte du Golphe du Mexique, written 16 years after publication of Popple's map, had
to comment that he was comparing his product with Popple's "que plusieurs
personnes ont regardé jusqu'à présent comme un bon ouvrage" - which many
people regard till this day as a good piece of work. |