Good Maps #1: Atlantic Colonies

This is the first in a series of posts wherein I share some of the maps that I have found while researching my project which are outstanding in quality.  As I've said before and will say again, there are an awful lot of unhelpful maps out there that purport to show this-or-that part of North America at this-or-that period of history, so if I can do my part to signal-boost some maps which are of actual quality, then that might be of use to... somebody.  My ultimate goal is to make maps of my own, but I'm a slow researcher and that still seems a long way off.  Also I'm not an expert, and I don't trust myself any more than you should.

So far the most detailed, helpful, and relevant set of maps I have found are from Herman R. Friis, A Series of Population Maps of the Colonies and the United States, 1625-1790, published in 1940.  These are a series of maps showing the locations and sizes of Euro-American settlements east of the Mississippi River for the years 1625, 1650, 1675, 1700, 1720, 1740, 1760, 1770, 1780, and 1790.  I would like to show all ten maps, but since they form the bulk of the article I'm not sure if that would be permitted by the copyright gestapo, so I'll just show four.  If you want to see the rest, the article is in Geographical Review, volume 30, no 3:

Friis' maps are useful because they show exactly what most colonial-era maps don't: just exactly where the colonists were, and what areas were under their jurisdiction.  In other words, what territories belonged to the British Empire in actuality, as opposed to on paper.  Territories located beyond the region of settlement can be assumed to belong to this-or-that Indian tribe.  There are still difficulties, however.  As far as I know, the British colonies were very agricultural in focus, so it's much easier to infer who-owned-what from who-lived-where when dealing with them than it is when dealing with New France, Louisiana, or Florida.  Friis' maps may not be very useful in mapping the latter.  In the future I would like to write a post specifically about the different definitions of territorial sovereignty one has to use when dealing with the British versus the French, Spanish, Dutch, sedentary Indians, and nomadic Indians.  But for now, the Friis maps are an excellent resource and I would like more people to know about them.

Another useful map of the Atlantic colonies is the following, from Ralph H. Brown, Historical Geography of the United States (1948).  It is based directly upon the Friis maps, but uses shaded regions with solidly delineated borders:

There is also this map of 1660, from The Settling of North America ed. Helen Hornbeck Tanner (1995).  The map projection used is a bit strange, though:

And this map from the same volume, showing the settled area of the British colonies in 1760:

I'm less enthusiastic about this one (same volume again), because it smears two decades of history into a single image, but it's certainly not terrible:

H. H. Tanner also edited another volume, the Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (1987).  I have quibbles with some of the maps from the two volumes, but they seem to mostly be good resources.