The “Plan for the city of St. Augustine, Florida and its surroundings, located at 29 degrees and 50 minutes north” by Antonio de Arredondo in 1737. An ideal for a city in 18th century Spanish Florida

Abstract

The 18th Century saw, with the establishment of the Royal Engineers Corps in 1711, the arrival of a new figure which would transform the graphical characteristics of Spanish Cartography. The military engineer, equipped with new regulatory cartographic tools, began the process of objectively defining Spanish territories in the New World, which would be a move away from the urban and military cartography and planimetries which were characteristic of the conquest and colonialization of the previous centuries. As a basis for the study of this new cartography, we will analyse Antonio de Arredondo’s plan for the city of San Agustín de la Florida (St. Augustine, Florida), given that it perfectly exemplifies the graphical characteristics and theoretical principles which fostered the process of the establishment of the Spanish military engineer in the New World in the opening decades of the 18th Century.

Keywords

• san agustín
• florida
• cartografía
• arredondo
• siglo xviii