1750 · Maps
Antique Map of Martinique, Showing Roads, Houses, Sugar Plantations, etc. c.1750
$1,680
€1,500 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Date
- 1750
- Maker
- Sanson
- Kind
- Maps
- Size
- 65.5 × 52.5 cm (25.8 × 20.7 in)
- Condition
- Good
- Period
- Colonial America
- Places
- The Lesser Antilles
- Reference
- BG-12178
What the condition grades mean
- Excellent
- Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
- Very good
- Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
- Good
- Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
- Fair
- Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.
Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured.
Delivery and import charges.
About this piece
Martinique, an original antique map titled "Carte de l'Isle de la Martinique, Colonie Françoise, l'une des Isles Antilles de l'Amérique," published in Amsterdam by Jean Covens and Corneille Mortier around 1750. The sheet is a copper engraving with hand-colored outlines in pink, yellow and green marking the parish divisions.
The island is drawn in great detail, with hachured hills and forests, rivers, roads and the hundreds of houses and sugar plantations scattered across the lowlands. Fort-Royal and its bay lie on the west coast, and capes, bays and anchorages are named all around the shore, which is edged with soundings and reefs. A framed key in the lower left, headed "Explication des Marques," explains the symbols for plantations, churches, mills and batteries, with scales of French and Dutch leagues beneath it. Two compass roses mark the east and west edges and a third sits at the foot. The long title block credits the survey to the plans of an engineer of the king and to the geographer Guillaume Delisle, and names the Comte de Maurepas, Secretary of State for the Navy.
Martinique was to the French what Barbados and Jamaica were to the English, an immensely profitable sugar island, and the map's plantation detail reflects that.
