File talk:Map of territorial growth 1775.svg

Uncertain Line at NS-MA border

The map shows the Proclamation Line conveniently following the Nova Scotia-Massachusetts border (the current Maine-New Brunswick border). The article at Thirteen Colonies also uses this map, but then shows another indicating the line ran east to the Bay of Chaleurs, not south along the intercolonial boundary, as this indicates. This suggests that all of Nova Scotia (including today's New Brunswick) was within the coastal zone (and should be colored red), not outside (pink). So what's the truth? And if this map is correct, why would the Line discriminate between the areas of today's Maine and New Brunswick? Both were coastal British colonies. Further, this map refers to a 1775 date, not 1763, causing some confusion. Any clarifications are welcome. Yoho2001 (talk) 06:54, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The line does not follow the NS/MA border. It actually continues roughly Northeast into the Gulf of St Lawrence. [originally posted 00:34, 8 May 2009‎ by user at IP 76.195.75.254 - added by D P J (talk) 20:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC)]

I think the OP is referring to the roughly straight-line north-south border between Maine and Nova Scotia/New Brunswick. That means the OP's question still remains valid. I'm also curious why the Proclamation Line doesn't follow the Maine-Quebec border along the height of land... indeed, much of the line appears to follow the St. Lawrence. D P J (talk) 20:50, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Red River Valley "Uncertainty" region

What is this "disputed" region doing on this map of North America in 1775? At the time, the Red River Valley was indisputably British, whether by British claim via the Hudson's Bay Company (Rupert's Land) or by conquest from France.

To the extent there would have been a theoretical boundary dispute between Britain and Spain, it would be in determining exactly where the source of the Mississippi was and how the border proceeded from that point to the continental drainage divide, hence it would be on the Mississippi side of the drainage divide, NOT on the Hudson's Bay side of the drainage divide as this map depicts. That is to say the disputed region would be in what is now central Minnesota in the "projection" of the Mississippi watershed west of Lake Superior.

Similarly, the 49th parallel, either on the map proper or in the note, really has little place on this map either, as its appearance as a border did not arrive until 1818. It definitely has no place demarcating the northern extent of the "disputed" region. Indeed, its inclusion seems to be a consequence of the misunderstanding of the issue already noted in my previous paragraphs.

The confusion as to the source of the Mississippi only became an issue when the 1783 Treaty of Paris was written and when the borders of the United States were being set when it specified a straight-line boundary west from Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi. Until that time, since the British and Spanish borders were set by water-based features (the continental drainage divide as the northern boundary and the Mississippi as the eastern boundary of the Spanish territory) without any specific straight lines connecting things, the fact of there being some confusion as to the exact cartographic location of the source of the Mississippi is little relevance as we can today depict quite accurately "what would have been" the boundary.

D P J (talk) 20:38, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Province of Quebec

Looking at the map as it currently stands, a reader might imagine that the Province of Quebec was entirely in what is now the US. I suggest that the words should be moved onto one diagonal line and the letters spaced out so the initial P is somewhere Champaign or Decatur, while the final C is near Quebec City or farther east. --76.71.6.254 (talk) 06:29, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Missing and misleading boundaries

The SVG version is missing boundaries between East Florida, West Florida, Indian Reserve, and Quebec which are shown as thin black lines in the original scan.

The boundary between Quebec and Hudson Bay Company may be misleading; if I understand correctly, HBC was granted the drainage basin of Hudson Bay, not the land north of 49° as implied by the map. -- Beland (talk) 14:17, 26 September 2019 (UTC)