1752 Carte Des Nouvelles Decouvertes dresseee par Phil. Buache…

This interesting pair of maps published as a single sheet was in a ten-part series of maps published by Didier Robert de Vaugondy in his supplement to Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie dealing primarily with North America, and investigating the evidence for the existence of a Northwest Passage. The maps cover new discoveries of the great northern sea, most of North America, and parts of Russia and Asia. The supplement to the Encyclopédie is considered one of the first studies of comparative cartography. The map was part of Buache’s work ‘Considerations Geographiques sur les Nouvelles Decouvertes au Nord de la Grande Mer’, which was presented to the Academie Royale des Sciences in Paris between 1752 – 1754, and helped ignite one of the greatest debates in cartography in the 18th century. The controversy which ensued following the publication of the Considerations Geographiques and revolved around the depiction of the Mer de l’Ouest in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Though Guillaume