Guillaume Delisle, also spelled Guillaume de l'Isle, or Guillelmo Delille (French pronunciation: [ɡijom dəlil]; 28 February 1675, Paris – 25 January 1726, Paris) was a French cartographer known for his popular and accurate maps of Europe and the newly explored Americas.
Delisle was the son of Marie Malaine and Claude Delisle (1644–1720). His mother died after childbirth and his father married again, to Charlotte Millet de la Croyère. Delisle and his second wife had as many as 12 children, but many of them died at a young age. Although the senior Delisle had studied law, he also taught history and geography. He had an excellent reputation in Paris’ intellectual circles, and served as a tutor to lords . Among them was the duke Philippe d’Orléans, who later became regent for the crown of France, and collaborated with Nicolas Sanson, a well-known cartographer. Guillaume and two of his half-brothers, Joseph Nicolas and Louis, ended up pursuing similar careers in science.
While his father has to be given credit for educating Guillaume, the boy showed early signs of being an exceptional talent. He soon contributed to the family workshop, by drawing maps for his father's historical works. Some have questioned the authorship of these first maps, saying that Delisle only copied what his father had done before him. In order to perfect his skills, Guillaume Delisle became the student of the astronomer Jean-Dominique Cassini. Early on he produced high-quality maps, the first being his Carte de la Nouvelle-France et des Pays Voisins in 1696.
At 27, Delisle was admitted into the French Académie Royale des Sciences, an institution financed by the French state. After that date, he signed his maps with the title of "Géographe de l’Académie". Five years later, he moved to the Quai de l’Horloge in Paris, a true publishing hub where his business prospered. Delisle's progress culminated in 1718 when he received the title of Premier Géographe du Roi. He was appointed to teach geography to the Dauphin, King Louis XIV’s son, a task for which he received a salary. Historian Mary Sponberg Pedley says, "once authority was established, a geographer's name might retain enough value to support two or three generations of mapmakers". In Delisle's case, it could be said that his accomplishments surpassed his father's. Up to that point, he had drawn maps not only of European countries, such as Italy, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, Poland, and regions such as the Duchy of Burgundy, but he had also contributed to the empire's claims to recently explored continents of Africa and the Americas.
Like many cartographers of his day, Delisle did not travel with the explorers. He drew maps mostly in his office, relying on a variety of data. The quality of his maps depended on a solid network to provide him first-hand information. Given his family's and his own reputation, Delisle had access to fairly recent accounts of travellers who were returning from the New World, which gave him an advantage over his competitors. Being a member of the Académie, he also kept current with recent discoveries, especially in astronomy and measurement. When he could not confirm the accuracy of a source, he would indicate it clearly on his maps. For instance, his Carte de la Louisiane shows a river that the baron of Lahontan claimed he discovered. As no one else could validate it, Delisle noted a warning to the viewer that it might not exist.
Delisle's search for exactitude and intellectual honesty entangled him in a legal dispute in 1700 with Jean-Baptiste Nolin, a fellow cartographer. On March 8, 1700, De L'Isle accused Nolin (at first not naming him) of having copied proprietary cartographic information from a manuscript globe that he had made for Chancellor Boucherat, which resided in the cabinet of the latter's son. This globe included information that De L'Isle had intentionally not put in print, such as the Sea of the West, because, according to De L'Isle himself, he did not want to make it available to France's competition. De L’Isle wrote of the Sea of the West. Delisle took Nolin to court to prove his plagiarism. In the end, Delisle convinced the jury of scientists that Nolin knew only the old methods of cartography and must have stolen the information from Delisle's own manuscript. Nolin's maps were confiscated and he was forced to pay the court costs of the case. The high scientific quality of the work produced by the Delisle family contrasted with the workshop of Sanson. While Sanson knowingly published outdated facts and mistakes, Delisle worked to present up-to-date knowledge.
After Guillaume Delisle's death in 1726, his widow tried to preserve the workshop and protect the family. She appealed to the king with the help of the abbot Bignon, the king's librarian and president of the academies. By that time, Guillaume's brothers Joseph-Nicolas and Louis had already left France to serve Peter the Great in Russia. The youngest Delisle, Simon Claude, lacked practical knowledge in cartography; he asked for the king's help in finding him an associate. The Delisle workshop was bequeathed to Philippe Buache.
Dutch cartographer Jan Barend Elwe reissued maps by Delisle in the late 18th century.
Delisle's 1718 Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississippi is an example of French cartography at its height. It was widely circulated in Europe and remained in print for years, either copied exactly or used as a base map. As a result of its accurate representation of the lower Mississippi and the surrounding areas, Delisle's map became a source map for all succeeding maps of the Mississippi River. It is particularly notable for its relatively accurate depiction of the Gulf area, as well as for its wealth of detail and information. The map is centered on the Mississippi River and the interior of what would later become the continental United States. It spans the area from the bottom of Lake Superior in the north to the point at which the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico in the south; the map also extends from the Atlantic coast, where numerous European settlements had been made, and westward to the Rocky Mountains.
The map is very detailed, including information on both known Indian territories (identified by tribes) and English colonies. The hundreds of labels on the map name lakes, rivers, colonies, cities, forts, mountains, and Indian tribes. It is ornamented with animals, ships, and cities, marked by small squares, circles, or rectangles with crosses on the top. These symbols are defined in the legend, which is located at the bottom of the map. It notes Indian habitations and includes an undulating line to mark the routes of Fernando de Soto and Louis de Moscoso in the area of the Mississippi where they were chased by Indian tribes. Next to the legend is a 16-point compass, placed in the center of the Gulf of Mexico. A fleur-de-lis indicates the geographic north; the magnetic north is omitted from the compass, suggesting that the map was not created as for navigational purposes.
The map does not have much detail for the Carolina region, shown as extending into present-day Tennessee and Kentucky. For example, there is a flawed conception of the Appalachians as reaching into the Michigan peninsula, an error potentially borrowed from earlier maps by Morden Brown or Sanson. The largest area of the map by far was "La Louisiane", or Louisiana. This was a France-centric version of the continent, intended to convey that the colony was firmly established colony by 1718. The colony consisted of between four hundred to seven hundred men, women, and children clustered around the mouth of the Mississippi. The map labeled major waterways and copper mines which could serve to boost the nation's commerce. It was considered to be a politically charged document that also depicted explorers’ routes and controversial territorial claims in the New World.
The British and Spanish areas of the map appear small compared to those of the French, even though the French presence in the interior of the continent was minimal at the time. The map extended the territories under French control by pushing the British colonial border further east than the Appalachian frontier. The British were incensed to see the claim that the Province of Carolina was named for the French king, Charles IX, and not for England's Charles II.