[TANNER, Henry Schenck (1786-1858)] – ROSA. Mapa de los Estados Unidos Mejicanos arreglado a la distribucion que en diversos decretos ha hecho del territorio el Congreso General Mejicano. Paris: Rosa, 1837.

[TANNER, Henry Schenck (1786-1858)] – ROSA. Mapa de los Estados Unidos Mejicanos arreglado a la distribucion que en diversos decretos ha hecho del territorio el Congreso General Mejicano. Paris: Rosa, 1837.

The first edition of probably the rarest of the maps used to establish the Mexico-U.S. border, published just after the Republic of Texas was established. Rosa's map closely follows H.S. Tanner's 1825 map of Mexico, the one later adapted by John Disturnell for the Mexican-American War and then used as the principal map during negotiation of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The borders were notional in these sparsely populated areas and discrepancies and disputes abounded, mostly but not entirely resolved by the Gadsden Purchase treaty in 1853. One of the great "might-have-beens" is visible on this Rosa map. Here the border between Alta California and Baja California is shown running southwest to northeast rather than simply west to east. If this border line rather than that of Disturnell had been used in the Treaty, the southern boundary of the United States at the Pacific Ocean "might have been fixed some 120 miles south of San Diego rather than only a little over a dozen miles south" (Ristow). Ristow, "John Disturnell's Map of the United Mexican States," in: A la carte, 2006; see also Compass Rose, vol. 17, no 1, 2003, describing how the acquisition of a copy of this map by U.T. Arlington completed their sequence of maps relating to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Lithographed map hand-colored in outline (604 x 744mm), 18 segments mounted on original linen-backing, and with inset map of the roads from Vera Cruz to Mexico City; table of distances (some toning and speckling, two pale foxmarks in Gulf, some small areas of abrasion in top right, pinholes and pencil marks in outer corners). Provenance: Auguste Logeret, contemporary mapseller, near the Pont Neuf (label on verso).

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