JEFFERYS, Thomas (1719-1771)

St. Vincent, from An Actual Survey Made In The Year 1775 after the Treaty with the Caribs

London: Printed for Robert Sayer, 20 February, 1775. Engraved map, uncoloured, with engraved title, scale of miles, latitude and longitude borders. Sheet size: 28 1/2 x 21 3/8 inches.

A finely detailed, one of the earliest large format printed maps devoted to St. Vincent, surveyed in the immediate aftermath of the 1773 treaty between the British and the island’s Carib communities, and preserving in cartographic form the contested division of land, settlement, resources, and colonial ambition.

The map's title places it directly in the aftermath of the 1773 treaty with the Caribs, a phrase that records the maps British colonial perspective and the period terminology used on the map. The boundary created by that settlement is one of the maps central features. On the west coast the Walliabou River is labelled Caribs Boundary, while on the east coast the Byara or Byera River is likewise marked as Caribs Boundary. Between them the mountainous spine of the island is heavily worked in hachure, with the words Caribs Lands spread across the northern and eastern interior. This gives the map a political immediacy unusual for a West Indian island map: it is at once a topographical survey, a colonial land document, and a record of the fragile division imposed after armed conflict. The engraved note below the title gives the map its commercial and agricultural emphasis: This Island of St. Vincent is 18 Miles 1/8 Long, and 11 Miles 1/5 Broad, has 22 Rivers capable of turning Sugar Mills, and contains 84,286 Acres. That sentence turns the survey into an argument for development. Rivers, bays, ridges, parish divisions, and boundaries are all made legible for planters, administrators, military officers, and investors interested in the islands future within the British Caribbean sugar economy. The island is divided into St. Davids, St. Patricks, St. Andrews, St. Georges, and Charlotte Parish, with the rugged central chain rendered in dense engraved hachures. The west coast includes Chateaubelair Bay, Petit Bordel, Cumberland Bay or Washilabou, Walliabou, Rutland Bay, Queens Bay, and Kingstown Bay, identified with the earlier name Wallingunny Bay. The southern coast marks Youngs Island and Youngs Sugar Loaf, while the east coast is richly named from Point Calovery and Point Young northward to Grand Sable South River, Grand Sable North River, Rabaca, Warrurau, Syraserry or Syreasery, Waringara Bay, Owia Bay, and Pointe Espagnole. The map also locates Fort Young and the Botanic Garden near Kingstown, a notable feature given that the St. Vincent Botanic Gardens had been established in 1765 and are widely described as among the oldest botanical gardens in the Western Hemisphere. This sheet has strong appeal across several collecting fields: early Caribbean cartography, British colonial surveys, the history of St. Vincent, Indigenous resistance, and plantation geography. The maps dense local nomenclature, treaty boundary, and agricultural note give it unusual documentary force creating a historically charged map of St. Vincent at the moment when survey, settlement, and conflict converged. Thomas Jefferys was one of the leading English cartographers of the 18th century. From about 1750, he published a series of maps of the Americas, that were among the most significant produced in the period. As Geographer to the Prince of Wales, and after 1761, Geographer to the King, Jefferys was well-placed to have access to the best surveys conducted, and many of his maps held the status of "official work." Jefferys died on 20th November 1771, but Robert Sayer (in partnership with John Bennett) 'having acquired the sole property of the Plates' and other material relating to the work, 'minutely followed' Jefferys' plans for The West India Atlas although Sayer does note that additional work was done using various sources to ensure that the information was up to date.

See also: D. Gestetner "Thomas Jefferys': West-India Atlas, 1775" in MapForum, issue 7 (2005), pp.40-48 & issue 8 (2005), pp.30-35; Phillips 2699.

Item #42749

Price: $1,700.00