Emanuel Bowen and Robert Sayer’s map of the Americas at the end of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) shows New England in the context of the much wider Western Hemisphere. Colorful boundary lines, accompanied by blocks of legal text, describe how European empires divided their claims over the continent at the war’s end. As Britain’s reach expanded over the Americas, Boston’s wharves became a microcosm of imperial geography, with enslaved people, Indigenous exiles, Caribbean plantation goods, local investors, and European financiers knitted together in an interdependent system.
The treaty ending the war did not spell victory for everyone, particularly the Indigenous peoples who faced displacement and shrinking territorial sovereignty. Even though this map names many Indigenous nations, the cartouche, or decorative title block, exemplifies how European mapmakers depicted Indigenous people in stereotyped and objectified ways. The two figures’ exoticized poses make them seem like passive observers to a historical period, which in reality consisted of a violent, radical redrawing of territory by and for European powers.