Map Of Colonial America 1700

Picture, if you will, the year 1700. Queen Anne has just plonked herself on the English throne, tea has not yet become a national obsession (shocking, we know), and across the pond, Colonial America looks less like a neatly organised Federation of Sensible Provinces and more like a toddler's attempt at a jigsaw puzzle. A map of Colonial America in 1700 is a glorious mishmash of British colonies, French claims, Spanish territories, and enormous blank spaces where cartographers simply wrote "I say, wouldn't fancy going there" and called it a day. Grab your compass and your sense of humour, because we're going on a romp through the colonies that would eventually (spoiler alert) chuck all that lovely tea into Boston Harbour.

The Thirteen Colonies: Not Quite a Baker's Dozen of Harmony

In 1700, the British colonies along the Atlantic coast were like thirteen siblings crammed into the back seat of a very long car journey. You had Massachusetts being the bossy eldest child, insisting everyone pray properly and glowering at witches. Virginia was busy growing tobacco with the enthusiasm of a man who's just discovered a money printer. Meanwhile, poor Georgia hadn't even been invented yet—that came in 1732, when James Oglethorpe decided what the New World really needed was a colony for debtors, which is perhaps the most relatable founding story in history. The boundaries between these colonies were about as firm as a soggy biscuit, with royal charters frequently overlapping, leading to decades of neighbours squabbling over land like seagulls fighting over chips.

A Snippet of Colonial Cartography to Squint At

Illustration accompanying a humorous guide to the map of Colonial America in 1700

Gaze upon this visual aid and appreciate that 18th-century maps were equal parts