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A pair of maps by Emmanuel Bowen, Trade Winds and Atlantic World, 1740s

A pair of maps by Emanuel Bowen: A NEW AND ACCURATE MAP OF AMERICA. [London, 1740s] (14″ x 17.75″) and A NEW AND ACCURATE CHART OF THE WESTERN OR ATLANTIC OCEAN. [London, 1744] (14 3/8″ x 17.5″).

Maps

$500

These two maps by Emanuel Bowen, prolific map engraver and geographer to the king in mid-18th century London, tell two parts of a similar story. A new and accurate map of America is not unusual in its geography, which depicts the “Parts Undiscovered” of the northwest of North America and outlines the shape and form of South America as rendered by recent research and compilation. What catches the eye is the inclusion of the trade winds, vital and predictable forces that made the extensive commerce between Europe and the Americas possible. The oceanic trade winds were first described in analytic detail and rendered on a world map by the British scientist Edmund Halley in 1686; their depiction on maps became more common on British geographical maps published in the first half of the 18th century, tending to emphasize the winds as the trade link between Europe, Africa and the Americas.

The second map of the pair, Bowen’s A new and accurate chart of the Western or Atlantic Ocean, visualizes nicely what historians now call the “Atlantic World” and reinforces the geographical idea of the “small” Atlantic: a place of trade and commerce, linking four regions in the trade goods of mercantilism and slave economy: Europe – generator of capital and consumer of products; Africa — repository of human and natural resources; West Indies and northern South America, — sites of labor intensive raw materials such as sugar cane, indigo, and rice; the east coast of North America — British colonial establishments, generator and transformer of raw materials into consumables for Europe. All this is implicit in the graphic rendering of the Western or Atlantic Ocean as a manageable and coherent space. In a similar map of roughly the same period in the Clements collection, Bowen proclaims the area as the “King of Great Britian’s Dominions in Europe, Africa, and America” thus making clear the imperial project.