De Noordelyckte Kuste van America

Title

De Noordelyckte Kuste van America

Description

chart of northeastern Canada, Greenland, Baffin Bay.

ca. 1680

Artist

Keulen (1654-1715)

Johannes van Keulen (1654 - 1715) was a 17th-century Dutch cartographer. He published the influential nautical atlas the Zee-Atlas and the pilot guide Zee-Fakkel .In 1678 Johannes van Keulen established himself in Amsterdam and in 1680 he obtained a patent from the States of Holland and West Friesland allowing him to print and publish maritime atlases and shipping guides. These were books of maps and descriptions of itineraries, used by helmsmen for safe navigation. The patent was a kind of protection against illegal copying of produced books and charts. This was especially important for the atlases which were made with extensive initial costs. Van Keulen named his firm ‘In de Gekroonde Lootsman’ ('In the Crowned Pilot'). Soon Van Keulen struck a deal with cartographer Claes Jansz. Vooght.

Historical Description

Various indigenous peoples have inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years before European colonization. Beginning in the 16th century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled along the Atlantic coast. As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. In 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, by the royal prerogative of Queen Elizabeth I, founded St. John's, Newfoundland, as the first North American English colony. French explorer Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1603 and established the first permanent European settlements at Port Royal (in 1605) and Quebec City (in 1608). Among the colonists of New France, Canadiensextensively settled the Saint Lawrence River valley and Acadians settled the present-day Maritimes, while fur traders and Catholic missionaries explored the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, and the Mississippi watershed to Louisiana. The Beaver Wars broke out in the mid-17th century over control of the North American fur trade. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 established First Nation treaty rights, created the Province of Quebec out of New France, and annexed Cape Breton Island to Nova Scotia. After the successful American War of Independence, The 1783 Treaty of Paris recognized the independence of the newly formed United States and set the terms of peace, ceding British North American territories south of the Great Lakes to the new country. the Constitutional Act of 1791 divided the province of Canada into French-speaking Lower Canada (later Quebec) and English-speaking Upper Canada (later Ontario), granting each its own elected legislative assembly.