Geographical, Historical, and Statistical Map of India. Hindoostan; or, India: Drawn from the Most Recent Authorities, for the Illustration of Lavoisne’s Genealogical, Historical, Chronological, and Geographical Atlas

1820

Copper engraving on paper

Print size: 16.5 x 20.75 in (42 x 52.5 cm)
Sheet size: 17.5 x 21.75 in (44.5 x 55.5 cm)
Folded: 17.5 x 11 in (44.5 x 28 cm)

Carey’s First American Atlas Map of British India—A Synoptic Philadelphia Edition of Lavoisne with Historical Battles and Statistical Notes (1821)

This richly annotated early nineteenth-century map of Hindoostan, or India, issued in Philadelphia as the first American edition of Lavoisne’s celebrated historical atlas mapping, represents an important synoptic portrayal of the subcontinent at the moment of expanding British paramountcy. Combining cartographic representation with extensive historical and statistical commentary, the sheet exemplifies the didactic atlas map in which geography is explicitly framed through political chronology, imperial conflict, and encyclopaedic knowledge.

Published by M. Carey and Son in Philadelphia in 1821, the map was engraved after the 1817 London model (first issued for Lavoisne’s atlas and published by J. Barfield), but here reissued for an American readership by Matthew Carey (1760–1839), the Dublin-born publisher who established himself as one of the foremost figures in early United States cartographic and educational printing. Carey’s atlases played a central role in shaping American geographical consciousness in the post-Revolutionary period, translating European imperial knowledge into a new transatlantic context.

The map covers the Indian subcontinent from Tibet and Kashmir south to Sri Lanka (Ceylon), with territories colour-coded to distinguish political control, British possessions and dependencies prominently highlighted. Particularly striking is the inclusion of no fewer than twenty-five battle sites, dated from 1300 to 1804, embedding the geography of India within a narrative of conquest, succession, and military transformation. Surrounding text panels discuss the climate, peoples, products, religions, and historical development of the region, reinforcing the map’s function as both a cartographic document and a compact geographical treatise.

The engraved surface is finely executed, with major centres—Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Agra, Lahore—clearly delineated alongside river systems, regional boundaries, and the infrastructural skeleton of British India. The combination of mapped space with statistical annotation reflects the early nineteenth-century impulse to rationalise India’s political complexity into an intelligible imperial schema, presenting the subcontinent as a legible object of administration, commerce, and historical interpretation.

As an object of historical cartography, Carey’s Philadelphia edition occupies a transitional position between Enlightenment-era atlas synthesis and the increasingly systematic survey-based mapping that would dominate later in the century under the Great Trigonometrical Survey. Its presence within Lavoisne’s broader atlas project situates it firmly within the encyclopaedic ambition of the period: the desire to classify, arrange, and disseminate global knowledge in coherent visual form.

This first American edition complements the other works in Theme 3 by demonstrating how Mughal-derived provincial frameworks and British administrative geography were not only consolidated in London but also transmitted outward through Atlantic publishing networks—shaping early nineteenth-century Western conceptions of India on both sides of the ocean.

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