Boston Rare MapsSpecializing in antique American maps & prints
An attractive and remarkably-informative map of the Dutch colony of Surinam, which in the 17th and 18th centuries was home to the earliest, largest and most significant Jewish population in the Americas. After its 1667 capture from the English, Suriname became one of several valuable Dutch colonies on the northern coast of South America, along with Essequibo, […]
An exceptionally rare 1708 broadside arguing for the restoration of the Royal African Company’s monopoly on the slave trade with substantial reference to the central role of slavery to the economy of Britain’s American “plantations.” Written with a Colonial audience in mind, with copies sent to the Caribbean and Virginia. Background Chartered by Charles II in […]
A rare thematic map delivering an economic argument for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. PJ Mode provides a most helpful explanation of the map and its maker: “This polemic map argues that import prohibitions and high duties on sugar were artificially inflating prices and inhibiting manufacturing in England. It was published by J. […]
A rare broadside lampooning Boston’s annual Abolition Day celebration in crudely racist language. This broadside was one of several “bobalition” texts issued in Boston between 1816 and 1828, all of which are now rare. These used a crude simulacrum of African-American speech patterns to mock the annual celebration held by the black residents of Boston commemorating […]
A unique surviving census of approximately two thirds of the African-American population residing in the Roanoke Freedmen’s Colony in 1864, giving much demographic detail on each individual recorded. Roanoke Island lies off the coast of North Carolina, between the mainland and the Outer Banks. Fortified by the Confederates at the beginning of the war, it […]
A remarkable and extraordinarily rare broadside simultaneously commemorating and mocking the experience of African-American freedmen during the Revolutionary era. Background During the run-up to the American Revolution it was not lost on British Tories that many leading Patriots advocated “liberty” while adamantly defending their right to own slaves (Perhaps the most memorable phrase in this […]
A rare seventeenth century slave trade contract between Boston merchant Richard Wharton on the one part and Jonathan Sybery of Maryland on the other, requiring Wharton to acquire slaves in the West Indies and deliver them to Sybery, on the Wye River in Maryland, for which Sybery agrees to pay with a large quantity of […]
A remarkable illustrated broadside highlighting the hypocrisy of the Washington, D.C. slave trade, published during a campaign for abolition in the national capital. The broadside features eight scenes of slaving activity in the national capital plus a small map showing the relative positions of the U.S. Capitol and the Public Prison. The images are complemented […]
A scarce map of the United States published in London in May 1861, particularly notable for its misrepresentation of the Secession Crisis that sparked the Civil War. The Crisis was of the utmost interest in Great Britain, where public opinion was deeply divided regarding whether to recognize the Confederacy. Many were appalled by the continued […]
![The African Companies Considerations on the Late Act of Parliament for Settling the Trade to AFRICA, Answer’d Paragraph by Paragraph. [London, 1708.]](https://bostonraremaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/BRM3294-RAC-broadsides_African-Companies-Considerations_lowres-e1559647996588-150x150.jpg)
An exceptionally rare broadside, ca. 1708-1709, refuting arguments put forward by the Royal African Company for the restoration of its monopoly on the African slave trade. With substantial reference to the central role of slavery to the economy of Britain’s American “plantations.” Background Chartered by Charles II in 1672 and headed by his brother the […]