ABSTRACT
In 1648 the former Dominican, Thomas Gage, tempted English readers with his description of the West Indies. Relating his travels across Spanish America, Gage hoped to rouse his fellow Englishmen to claim the inheritance that should have been theirs—if only Christopher Columbus had sailed under the Cross of St. George. Mapping, cartography, and cosmography allowed Spain and Portugal to lay claim to enormous swaths of land in the Americas, Africa, and Asia before any other European polity could begin to claim them as their own. Possession through mapping involved technologies and institutions that went well beyond voyages and expeditions. The English envied the printed records, compilations, and mapping institutions the Iberians established. Like the Iberians, the English learned that possession came through mapping and naming. Early English maps did what the Spanish and Portuguese had long been doing, namely, treating America like a palimpsest giving the land new names at will.
