Detail from Popple’s Map of the British Empire

This is a detail from Henry Popple’s 1733 Map of the British Empire in America. The pink borders show Britain’s somewhat optimistic land claims of North American territory. At this time France claimed all land drained by the Mississippi River and its tributaries, shown in this map by the brownish border line on the Mississippi River. French maps of the time depicted the border of French territory nearly all the way to the Appalachian Mountains. Popple, an English gentleman employed by the Board of Trade and Plantations in London who was not a professional cartographer, published this large-scale map in 1733 based on multiple extant maps. Despite its controversial territory claims and known inaccuracies, it was used heavily by the Board of Trade and Plantations.