Asa Whitney's Vision

Asa Whitney's Vision

Transcontinental railroads and American global trade

Asa Whitney created these maps in the late 1840s to aid his campaign to build the first transcontinental railroad across North America. I found them while researching American ideas about trade with China during the era of manifest destiny. They provide an example of how Americans saw their nation’s development as bound up with global trade – and specifically tied to trade with Asia.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Cartography Associates, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

1849-1880

Dael Norwood
Binghamton University
dnorwood@binghamton.edu

Public Access

Images and Text

English

Asia and the United States