Assessing the Usefulness of a Cartographic Curiosity: The 1673 Map of a Sugar Island
Abstract During the colonial period, maps of the New World were important sources of information to Europeans, providing graphic depictions of the resources and inhabitants of new lands as well as of the progress being made by colonists. Today these historic maps are intriguing to scholars, yet they are rarely used to the fullest extent possible as sources of historical data. The 1673 map of the eastern Caribbean island of Montserrat is used to demonstrate how cartometry, documentary research, and field study can be used to reap valuable information from a supposed unreliable source. After I corrected the map for spatial distortion, I checked the data it contained against contemporary documents and the results of archaeological and geographical field research. My conclusion is the map is so accurate that it may serve as a freeze frame of seventeenth-century colonial agency.