Antique Map of Alsace-Lorraine, Annexed to Germany, Bartholomew, circa 1871

About this sheet

A boundary map of Alsace-Lorraine, printed to show the territory that Germany took from France at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. The key on the sheet is explicit: Germany coloured one way, France another, and Alsace-Lorraine annexed to Germany a third. The map runs from Compiegne and Meaux in the west across to Darmstadt and the Rhine Palatinate, taking in Nancy, Luneville, Toul, Colmar, Troyes and Luxembourg, with the Haute-Saone and the Vosges to the south. It is signed by J. Bartholomew. Because the annexation dates from May 1871, this sheet cannot have been printed for the 1870 issue of the atlas and was supplied to bring a standing copy up to date, which is also why it carries the supplementary plate number 14A. Few nineteenth century maps record a political rupture as directly as this one, and it is the sheet in this group with the clearest story to tell.

Black's General Atlas of the World was the standard British household atlas of the middle nineteenth century, issued in Edinburgh by the publishing house of Adam and Charles Black, the firm better known to most readers as the publisher of Sir Walter Scott and of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Its maps were engraved on steel, most of them under the direction of the Edinburgh cartographer John Bartholomew, whose clear lettering and restrained hill shading gave the atlas a legibility that its heavier rivals lacked. Successive issues were revised as boundaries moved and railways spread, so a sheet from Black's records the world as an educated Victorian reader understood it in the year the plate was printed.

Sheets from this atlas are sought after today both as reference cartography and as decorative material, the generous folio format suiting a wall quite as readily as a portfolio. Hung as a pair or a group, the plates make a handsome and genuinely informative wall.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with the centre fold as issued, light toning and a few small spots in the margins; the map and its colour are clean and bright.

This is an original antique map, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.