historical maps
18th century views of my 21st century world
Below is an a map by Philippe Buache from 1752, which was used as an illustrative plate in Denis Diderot's "Encyclopedié".
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Like my Vaugondy map that was also featured in the Encyclopedié, it attempted to show the most up-to-date view of the Northwest Coast.  Like Vaugondy that meant including the lands and waters "discovered" by the mythical Spanish Admiral de Fuente that had first been charted by Nicolas de l'Isle.  Through repetition legend was becoming reality as cartographers repeated and often expanded upon information that would only be proven to be false by Cook and Vancouver. 
All of the de Fuente myths are there, from the St Lazarus archipelago to the great inland seas.  But this map also includes the "inhabited lands or pensinsula" of what is now Alaska, serving as a link between the de Fuente myth and discoveries made by the Russians.  Buache didn't limit himself to European legends, but in the true spirit of universal knowledge and enlightenment he included Asian myths as well.  Right beside the Western Sea and entries of Juan de Fuca and Martin Aguilar that feature on so many European maps is "Fou Sang", supposedly discovered by the Chinese.
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Quivira and Teguayo ("Tegauaie") are other features that were repeated so often that they were almost considered fact, even though they seem to always lie just over the next hill, or just a bit further west.  Buache is however unusually careful to point out that the south coast of the Western Sea was charted by Guillaume de l'Isle.  Better safe than sorry.
Most unusual of all is the bottom half of the map, which shows a "Japanese view of the world" brought to the Royal Society of London by a certain Kaempfer.  Surprising considering this was still Edo-era Japan, closed to all but the Dutch and Chinese in Nagasaki.  

Buache then imaginatively tries to link Japanese and European knowledge together, much as he linked the Russian landfalls to de Fuente's myth with an Alaskan peninsula.
The Encyclopedié was considered to be a manifesto of the Enlightenment, to the point that it was banned by the Church and French Royalty in 1759.