Period

18th Century

Featured Items

Detail of an engraved map shows the direction of flow of the "Golfe de Floride." Other text in French labels nearby landmarks such as "Isles de Bahama.'

The Gulf Stream flowing northwards…

Benjamin Franklin
1778
Detail of calf-bound book shows worn spine, embossed detail, and stamped title.

Secrete resolutien van de edele groot mog...

Johan de Witt
1717
Detail of title page shows red and black printed text reading "Oronoko, traduit de l'anglois, de Madame Behn."

Oronoko

Aphra Behn
1745
Detail of an engraved map of northeastern North America shows "Maryland," "Virginia," and other labels in English for forts and bodies of water.

[A new chart of the English Empire in North America]

Cyprian Southack
1717
Detail of a colored, engraved map shows pink, orange, and yellow used to outline areas and labels in English such as "Penobscots."

Map of the British and French Dominions…,

John Mitchell
1755
Detail of an engraved, hand colored print shows portrait of Hendrick, a Mohawk chief.

The brave old Hendrick the great Sachem or Chief of the Mohawk Indians...

1740
picture of title page of Mudo lamento

Mudo lamento de la vastissima, y numerosa Gentilidad, que habita las dilatadas margenes del caudaloso Orinoco, su origen, y vertientes, à los piadosos oídos de la Magestad Catholica de las Españas, nuestro señor Don Phelipe Quinto (que Dios guarde).

TAPIA, Matías
1715
Detail of a printed text shows a large, leafy tree. Labels printed below.

Museum Museorum

Michael Bernhard Valentini
1704

Related

A detail from the "Carte Physique de la Grande Mer"
Map of the Month

Philippe Buache, “Carte Physique de la Grande Mer ci-devant nommée Mer du Sud ou Pacifique…” from Cartes et tables de la géographie physique ou naturelle: présentées au roi le 15 mai 1757, Paris: 1770

August 30
Frontispiece from Museum Wormianum. Seu, Historia rerum rariorum, 1655.

Natural History Collecting in Late Colonial New Spain: Highlights from the JCB Collection

Engraving showing whale fishery
Fellow's Talk

Baleação e Escravidão: Conexões Atlânticas entre New England, África e Brasil. Séculos XVIII e XIX (in Portuguese)

Frontispiece of 'Mis Mac Rea', by Hillard-D'Auberteuil
Fellow's Talk

“Indian Castles” and “Barbarous Frenchmen”: the Shadow of New France in the American Revolution

The cartouche of the map “Algemeene Kaart van de Colonie of Provintie van Suriname,” by Alexander de Lavaux
Map of the Month

Alexander de Lavaux, “Algemeene Kaart van de Colonie of Provintie van Suriname,” after 1758

July 28
Engraving of two Nahua men speaking to one another. An angel hovers behind one of the men, preventing him from producing idolatrous speech, while the other has a snakes stemming from his mouth, which is representative of such language.
Fellow's Talk

"Brute animals" and "rational creatures": Defining humanity in the Indigenous-language vocabularies and pedagogies of New Spain

An eighteenth-century hand colored, engraved image of a ship unloading cargo and men from a boat, surrounded by other ships and backgrounded by a fortification, dwellings, churches, and a harbor.
Fellow's Talk

"To cease and yield the continual pretensions of the French:" The Spanish Establishment of Monte Cristi as a Free Port, 1750-1763

Image of Peruvian Print Shop
Lecture

Historia del libro en lenguas originarias de América

See Also

Pilot

Greek