The Elusive West and the Contest for Empire, 1713–1763 (review)

Mapp’s imaginatively crafted book explores the relationship between European geographical uncertainty about the North American West and imperial rivalries between Spain, France, and Great Britain during the eighteenth century. Offering a continental rather than an eastern-littoral or Atlantic-world perspective of early America, Mapp consults a trilingual source base of maps, geographies, travel narratives, scientific treatises, and political papers to demonstrate that European misconceptions of lands west of the Mississippi River influenced the origins, unfolding, and consequences of the Seven Years’ War, otherwise known as the “Great War for Empire.”

The book’s five parts advance two main objectives. The first three parts (Chapters 1–8) illustrate the ways in which ignorance of the West and its potential relationship to Pacific Rim trade shaped European imperial ambitions. Mapp deftly explains why geographical knowledge of the North American West, compared to that about Eurasia or colonial possessions in other parts of the world, remained elusive. Treacherous coastlines thwarted maritime exploration, and a bewildering array of plains, deserts, canyons, and mountains, along with constant warfare with and among numerous Indian communities, prohibited extensive investigation of the interior. Wherever Europeans were able to set foot in the West, the diversity of Indian languages, descriptions, cartographical representations, and motives that they encountered frustrated their efforts to acquire accurate information. In other words, the West lacked the indigenous centralized polities found in Mexico, Peru, China, Russia, and Europe that made the detailed surveying of those lands possible. Regardless, Europeans continued to imagine that the region harbored inestimable mineral wealth, civilizations comparable to those of the Incans and Aztecs, and a northwest passage linking Atlantic settlements to Asia, Spain’s lucrative South Sea colonies, and undiscovered islands in the Pacific Ocean.

The remaining two parts (Chapters 9–15) assess the extent to which European interest in, and confusion about, the West influenced the course of the Seven Years’ War. Rather than challenge current historiography, Mapp focuses on three understudied aspects of the war. First, he contends that British searches for a northwest passage via the Hudson Bay helped to sway French officials, who viewed such endeavors as one thread in a larger pattern of expansionism and aggression, to declare war against Britain. Second, Mapp avers that Spain remained neutral in the early years of the war due to its wariness about French presence in western territories, thus depriving France of a much-needed ally and hastening its defeat. Finally, he concludes that France’s changing attitudes about the potential value of the West led it to cede its Louisiana possessions to Spain in 1762. Spain accepted the cession not because it still believed that the land held promise but because it hoped to curb British expansion. In each instance, Mapp reveals how designs on, and ignorance of, western lands led European powers to contradictory and often self-destructive policy decisions.

Mapp’s book is thoughtfully researched, structured, and argued but not necessarily interdisciplinary in its approach. Although Mapp draws on the works of historical geographers, anthropologists, and ethno-historians, his primary objective is to understand the perceptions and actions of imperial traders, explorers, missionaries, and officials. But readers approaching the text from literary, material-culture, or Native American Studies angles might see missed opportunities in his analysis of such sources as maps and travel narratives, as well as his discussions of the Indians who inhabited the West, some of whom, like their European counterparts, were moving westward, encountering new lands and influencing continental diplomacy.

Nothwithstanding this minor criticism, Mapp has written an excellent book. Scholars interested in the early North American West will discover a treasure trove of English, French, and Spanish sources with which to augment their own research. Historians of empire, diplomacy, and the Americas will likewise benefit from Mapp’s ambitious and successful effort to study early America from continental and multi-imperial perspectives.