French news

New England magnified to show differing territories of Pennsylvania (spelled Pensilvania), New York, New Hampshire, and Maine

Map of the Month: January 2023

Happy New Year! Our January Map of the Month is this map titled “North America Drawn from the Latest and Best Authorities” that is believed to be from the 1780s. It was made by Thomas Kitchin, an English cartographer and engraver, and displays the entirety of the North American continent as had been...

A portion of the “Carte De La California” historic map depicting sections of all 5 historically significant cartographic changes in representing California. Each different map is separated by a thick black border. The interior of each section is a map of California, labeled “Californie”, and its major cities at the time which each segment was drafted.

Map of the Month: April 2022

Our April Map of the Month is titled “Carte de la Californie” and compares five recreations of historically significant maps of California to show the evolution of cartographic knowledge of the region. It was originally published as a supplemental material to Diderot’s Encyclopédie, and this particu...

Historic map depicting Northern Mexico, Baja California, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana Territory

Map of the Month: December 2021

Our December Map of the Month is this French map titled “New Mexico, with the Northern Part of Old, Or New Spain”. Among the oldest maps in our collection, this map was made by Rigobert Bonne and was published in 1780 as part of Guillaume-Thomas Raynal’s famous Atlas de Toutes Les Parties Connues du...