Surveyors of Empire: Samuel Holland, J.F.W. Des Barres, and the Making of The Atlantic Neptune

Director Stephen Hornsby’s Surveyors of Empire: Samuel Holland, J.F.W. Des Barres, and the Making of The Atlantic Neptune has just been published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.  The book examines British surveying and mapping of northeastern North America in the 1760s and early 1770s, and the publication of The Atlantic Neptune, a monumental four-volume nautical atlas.  Professor Matthew Edney, University of Southern Maine and Director of the History of Cartography project, comments:  “Surveyors of Empire is an outstanding work of scholarship, well grounded in the archive, a project that provides a telling parable of imperial power.  Accessible and understated, it should be of interest to a wide array of readers.”  The book is lavishly illustrated with maps and historical images.