John Speed’s cartographic invention of early imperial Britain (1610s-1620s)

This article examines how the second part of John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain (1611-12), entitled The Prospect of the most Famous Parts of the world (1627), expresses nascent imperial ideals and ambitions through a medium which is claimed to be truthful and objective. Speed’s atlas embraces the selective process inherent to cartography and exploits the ambiguities of an incomplete mapping of the world to amplify, naturalise and encourage colonial or commercial ventures at a time when the British had only a handful of factories in Asia and a small straggling colony in North America to show for.