Mexico & Guatemala Map 1836 Regional Print - Mexico City, Guatemala City, Chihuahua

Henry S. Tanner issued this second, distinct map of Mexico and Guatemala in 1836, this time as part of A New Universal Atlas, a differently structured and titled publication from the Universal Atlas he had begun issuing in individually numbered parts three years earlier. Where that earlier series was sold piecemeal to subscribers, this 1836 atlas was compiled as a single coherent volume of seventy sheets forming a series of one hundred and seventeen maps, plans and sections, reflecting Tanner's continued dominance of the American atlas trade through the 1830s. The map is colored region by region in full color rather than relying purely on outline tinting, giving this edition a noticeably richer visual presence than Tanner's earlier Mexico sheet. It appeared as Texas's own independence movement reached its climax, published the same year as the Battle of San Jacinto, even though the map itself still shows Texas within Mexico's northern frontier as the republic's leaders continued to claim.

Mexico City remains the map's administrative anchor, much as on Tanner's earlier sheet, though this edition's fuller regional coloring makes the surrounding central provinces read with considerably more visual clarity. Guatemala again appears as a distinct, separately identified territory, its status as part of the short-lived Federal Republic of Central America still current at the time of engraving. Chihuahua stretches across the map's northern frontier, one of the vast, thinly governed provinces whose loose administrative control from Mexico City would, within a decade, make it and its neighboring territories flashpoints in the coming war with the United States. Veracruz anchors the Gulf coast as the republic's principal port, its trade routes running inland toward the capital along paths Tanner's engravers traced in careful detail.

A thoughtful pick for a Texas-heritage buyer or collector interested in the exact year Texas won its independence, even though this particular Mexican-published map still shows the territory as part of the republic. TheMapVault also carries Tanner's earlier 1834 Mexico and Guatemala sheet from his original Universal Atlas; this 1836 edition comes from an entirely separate, later atlas project with fuller regional coloring, giving the two Tanner maps genuinely different visual character despite sharing a cartographer and general subject. It's supplied unframed, in the same full range of nine sizes as every print in this collection.