Carte de la Nouvelle France, où se voit le cours des Grandes Rivières de S. Laurens & de Mississipi
DE FER, Nicolas

Carte de la Nouvelle France, où se voit le cours des Grandes Rivières de S. Laurens & de Mississipi

[Amsterdam]
Sans date [1719]
Size : 51,8 x 55,1 cm
Technique : Carte gravée sur cuivre, avec les contours coloriés à l’époque. (Taches brunes, carte renforcée au verso.)
Reference : 339-61
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Description

Beautiful map in French, responding to the public's fascination in the early 18th century with the newly conquered colonies. It extends from Labrador and Hudson Bay to the Tropic of Cancer (New Spain and Cuba), with Newfoundland and the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the east. The map also presents, in a large ornate cartouche, a view of the city of Quebec and a plan of its surroundings.

Based on the four-sheet map of New France published by Nicolas de Fer in 1718, this one-sheet map first appeared in 1719 in the sixth volume of Henri-Abraham Chatelain's Atlas historique. It was intended to promote the young French Company of the West. Created in 1717 by John Law on the basis of the Mississippi Company, the French Company of the West had as its objective the expansion of trade with the French colonies in North America, and promoted it with such publicity and exaggeration that the infatuation of the demand for the Company's shares quickly led to the formation of a speculative bubble and a financial scandal by 1720.

Kershaw 336; McCorkle 719.5.

DE FER, Nicolas

Nicolas de Fer (1646-1720), was an engraver, geographer, titled geographer of the King and active from 1687 to 1720. He began his apprenticeship at the age of 12 with an engraver. In 1687, he took over the map trade from his mother after the death of his father, Antoine de Fer, a print and map merchant who died in 1673, and executed more than 600 maps or plans: frontier maps, maps of the new conquests of Louis XIV, cities fortified by Vauban, voyages and discoveries of new territories. In his main work, the Atlas Curieuse, he published several maps of the Americas and the West Indies. At his death, his sons-in-law, Guillaume Danet and Jacques-François Bénard  also engravers, continued Nicolas de Fer's activity on their own account.