East and West Florida in 1765 - St. Augustine, Pensacola, Apalachicola

The London Magazine published this detailed map of East and West Florida in 1765, just two years after the 1763 Treaty of Paris transferred Florida from Spain to Britain at the close of the Seven Years' War. Deciding the newly acquired territory too large to govern as a single unit, Britain split it into two colonies divided by the Apalachicola River, East Florida administered from St. Augustine and West Florida from Pensacola, and this map documents that fresh administrative division for a British readership eager to understand its country's expanded American holdings. The sheet is notable for depicting southern Florida in an archipelagic style inherited from earlier Spanish sources, rendering the peninsula's tip as a scatter of roughly fifty large islands connected by wide navigable channels running from the Gulf to the Atlantic.

St. Augustine, the old Spanish colonial capital, continued under British rule as the seat of East Florida, while Pensacola governed West Florida, a colony that in its fullest extent stretched across portions of present-day Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida before Spain recaptured it in 1781. Apalachicola marks the river dividing the two colonies, its mouth and lower course rendered in unusually rich detail for a map of this period. The map is dense with place names and early settlement information, reflecting the intense British interest in cataloging its new southeastern acquisitions, both of which would remain loyal to the Crown throughout the American Revolution before reverting to Spain in the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the war.

This map is a striking gift for a family with roots in colonial Florida, for a collector of British colonial American cartography, or for anyone drawn to the curious archipelagic depiction of early Florida. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.