Before Chesapeake City at one end of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was named in 1839, the plantation site had been known as Bohemia Manor for more than two centuries, under the ownership of Augustine Herrman, a Bohemian who worked for the Dutch West-Indische Compagnie (wic) in both Amsterdam and later New Amsterdam. Herrman marked its location on his magnificent map Virginia and Maryland as it is Planted and Inhabited this present year 1670. Koot explores the multiple intentions of the Herrman map from its origins as a manuscript initially commissioned by Philip Calvert in 1659 delimiting the boundary between Dutch New Netherlands and colonial Maryland to a far different map printed in London in 1673 as a piece of imperial propaganda celebrating possession of the broader Chesapeake.

Koot first tells the story of this “map in motion” in three chapters that trace its journey through Herrman’s...

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