Period

18th Century

Featured Items

Detail of a printed book shows a portrait frontispiece of Phillis Wheatley sitting at a table with a quill in her hand in the process of writing.

Poems on various subjects, religious and moral

Phillis Wheatley
1773
Detail of a printed book shows a fold-out illustration of stones outside of a buildings facade.

Descripcion de las antiguedades de Xochicalco

Jose Antonio de Alzate y Ramirez
1791
Detail of a printed book shows a full-page colored illustration of a plant with insects on it. On the opposite page, text in Latin is visible.

Dissertatio de generatione et metamorphosibus insectorum Surinamensium

Maria Sibylla Merian
1719
Detail of an engraved map of Azilia shows a castle in the center of the city, surrounded by farms and four quadrants.

A plan representing the form of setling the districts, or county divisions in the Margravate of Azilia

1717
Detail of a printed book shows text in French.

Lettre aux Espagnols-Américains

Juan Pablo Vizcardo y Guzman
1799
Detail of a manuscript shows text in Spanish.

Ofrenda política con que se pretende dar idea para más fácil y pronto uso del Govierno universal de nuestras Indias

Manuel Jose de Ayala
1767
Detail of a printed book shows text in Mohawk and English.

A primer for the use of the Mohawk children . . .

Daniel Claus
1786
Detail of a printed book shows a full-page illustration on the frontispiece showing a child carrying the world on their shoulders.

Atlas des Enfans, ou nouvelle methode pour apprendre la geographie,...

1784

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[Plan of the Seige of Savannah, 1779]
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Mount Vernon symposium: Mapping the American Revolution

Bertie Mandelblatt, December 15, 2022
A detail from the "Carte Physique de la Grande Mer"
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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, 2021
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
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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
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“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
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Alexander de Lavaux, “Algemeene Kaart van de Colonie of Provintie van Suriname,” after 1758

July 28, 2021
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

See Also

American Revolutions

Cartography