1755 Partie Occidentale de la Nouvelle France ou du Canada
DESCRIPTION
This landmark map, titled Partie Occidentale de la Nouvelle France ou du Canada, represents a major advance in the European understanding of the Great Lakes and the interior of North America.
Originally engraved in 1745 by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, hydrographer to the French Navy, the map was later reissued in 1755 by Johann Baptist Homann at a moment when France and Great Britain were deeply engaged in the French and Indian War. Bellin’s work marked a decisive break from earlier speculative geography, presenting a more coherent and navigable depiction of the Great Lakes basin than any of its predecessors.
The map synthesizes firsthand information gathered from French explorers, missionaries, and fur traders active in the region. In particular, Bellin drew heavily on the journals of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, whose expeditions contributed significantly to the placement of Indigenous nations, villages, and trade routes across the upper Mississippi and Great Lakes region.
Additional influence came from the writings of Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, whose accounts shaped both the hydrography and the persistence of certain cartographic myths. Among these are the celebrated “ghost islands” of Lake Superior, including Île Philippeaux, Île Pontchartrain, and Île Ste. Anne, fictitious features that would appear on maps for nearly a century and confound generations of explorers.
Bellin’s map is also rich in political and military detail, documenting the French colonial presence through the careful inclusion of forts, missions, and settlements. Sites such as Fort Frontenac, Fort Niagara, Mission Saint François Xavier, and Port de Checagou (the future site of Chicago) underscore the strategic importance of the Great Lakes as a corridor of trade, diplomacy, and imperial competition. In the lower right portion of the map, Bellin employed a deliberate visual strategy common in French cartography of the period: the English colonies of New York, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are shown at a reduced proportional scale, subtly asserting French territorial dominance in North America.
The verso bears a small handwritten note in brown ink listing the Great Lakes in French, including Supérieur, Huron, Michigan, Érié, and Ontario, grouped together with a bracket. The inscription appears to be a period reference annotation, likely used to identify the subject of the map when stored or cataloged, rather than a later collector’s mark.
CONDITION
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