This map hung on the wall of Independence Hall in 1776, and John Adams mentioned it in a letter to his wife Abigail Adams on August 13, 1776. “Popples Map,” he wrote, “is the largest I ever saw, and the most distinct. … There is one in the Pensilvania State House.”
The map depicts a vision for British North America that had begun to disintegrate by the 1770s. Henry Popple created the map in 1733 for the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, an agency whose mandate was to regulate the far-flung British colonies. From sugar plantations based on chattel slavery in the Caribbean to coastal fisheries off of Nova Scotia, British settlements took many different forms, and royal authorities had a relatively weak hand in managing their affairs.
The geographic information in maps like this one helped administrators in London assert their control over colonial possessions in the Americas. This move towards imperial consolidation created political tensions, notably in places like Massachusetts, which was particularly dependent on maritime trade.
By the summer of 1776 the empire was in crisis, with thirteen North American colonies engaged in outright rebellion. When John Adams and the other delegates gathered in Philadelphia, they still saw themselves as citizens of their own individual colonies as well as the larger British Empire. But when they signed the Declaration of Independence, they took the first steps towards creating a new political territory.
This map was created for British colonial rulers in 1733. What did they want from this place and how does the map show that?
Four decades later, John Adams and his contemporaries looked at the same map. What did they want from this place and how did their desires shape what they saw on the map?
How does what a viewer wants change what they see?