Map of Mexico and Guatemala

Woodcut map from 1830 showing the First Republic of Mexico.

This neat little map was originally published in Boston in 1830 as part of Nathan Hale’s An Epitome of Universal Geography. It shows the territorial extent of the First Mexican Republic, which had gained its independence from Spain less than a decade prior. An interesting group of settlements, regions, and geographic features are labeled throughout; including New Albion, the Rocky Mountains, the Mosquito Shore, and San Saba (probably San Antonio).

Mexico was suffering through a period of political turmoil in the late 1820s and 1830s, and as a result, thousands of American emigrants settled in the relatively unpoliced region of Texas. By 1830, they outnumbered Mexicans by nearly 20 to 1, and the government in Mexico City imposed an official ban on immigration to Texas, stoking the flames of impending revolution.

Source: From Revolution to Reconstruction