DESCRIPTION: This antique French map on watermarked, chain-laid paper depicts the environs of Mardick and Dunkirk within 3 years after the demolition of the Dunkirk harbor in 1714.
At the end of the War of Spanish Succession England agreed to turn over Dunkirk, which it captured in 1708, to the French. In order to prevent the port's usage as a base for privateers and sea raiders the English demolished the harbor and city walls. This map depicts the French's quick response to the demolition- a new canal near Mardick that re-connected Dunkirk's harbor to the sea.The appeal also reveals how intertwined speculation and infrastructure were along the Georgia coast. The same investors held stock in the City of Brunswick Land Company, the Canal Company, and related ventures such as the Brunswick Land Company trust deed later cited in congressional records. The letter’s rhetoric promised that, once the canal opened, emigrants from Maine would build sawmills, lots near the wharves would sell instantly, and the city would finally justify earlier hopes of becoming a major southern port. It was both a financial circular and a piece of booster propaganda.
In the broader context, the letter marks one of the last organized attempts to complete the antebellum Brunswick Canal before the project faded into insolvency. It ties together every thread found in later documentation—the Ocean Bank trusteeship, D. Randolph Martin’s role as fiduciary, and the continuing pattern of Georgia infrastructure financed through northern capital. The document stands as a vivid example of how local ambition, speculative land companies, and Wall Street banking combined in the mid-nineteenth century to promote internal improvements along the southern seaboard.
PUBLICATION DATE: 1716
GEOGRAPHIC AREA: France
BODY OF WATER: English Channel
CONDITION: Good.
Paper mildly tanned with a single wormhole just outside the top neat line. Small weak area top left neat line.
COLORING: None
ENGRAVER: P. Starck-man
SIZE: 13
" x
9 "
ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION: 9
PRICE: $175
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