This map illustrates Boston’s position within the Atlantic world, highlighting the strategic importance of Nova Scotia and the Gulf of Maine, as well as the overlapping claims of Indigenous peoples and French and British forces. In the middle of the eighteenth century, imperial officials in Boston managed an increasingly unstable geography where longstanding relations between Indigenous nations, the Acadians, and English settlers gave way to growing imperial ambitions. The map labels the “Abnakies” (Abenaki) in Maine and the “Micmacs” (Mi’kmaq) in Nova Scotia. It also provides special detail in an inset showing the stronghold town of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, which occupied a strategic location at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. New Englanders led a siege of Louisbourg in 1745, a prelude to the conflict that erupted into the Seven Year’s War in 1756. During the 1750s and 1760s, more than 11,000 French-speaking Acadians were expelled from their homes under threat of violence from the British, further destabilizing the region.
The horizontal bands of color stretching across this map create long and unfamiliar rectangular borders for Virginia and the Carolinas. This reach into indigenous peoples’ lands illustrates British territorial aspirations, which clashed with the reality of indigenous sovereignty.