Simpson, James
James Simpson (fl. c. 1755 - 1770) was a British civil engineer and surveyor based in Jamaica and the wider British West Indies in the mid-18th century, a period marked by significant land acquisition, plantation expansion, and strategic mapping efforts under British rule. Details about his life are highly elusive. In the late 1750s, to at least 1761, he served as Chief Surveyor in Jamaica. By 1765, we find him in Dominica, where he produced a survey of Portsmouth, Charlotte-Town (Charlotte-Ville); then St. Vincent, where he surveyed Kingston; then Tobago, where he mapped Georgetown. Most of the surveys went unpublished and survive only in manuscript form.
Jamaica During the Maroon Wars.
Carte de l'Ile de la Jamaique, extraite des Cartes topographiques Anglaises de T. Craskell... et de J. Simpson. Rédigée en 1786, corrigée et augmentée en 1799.
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This is a rare, large-format 1799 chart and map of Jamaica with an inset of Kingston Harbor. Issued in the wake of the Second Maroon War (1795), and overshadowed by the imminent French loss of Haiti to Toussaint Louverture, this map represents an effort by the French to absorb and utilize the best British information pertinent to Jamaica during a period in which both the British and the French were experiencing slave rebellion in the West Indies. Despite decades of war with each other, the Caribbean territories of these two slave-holding empires found common ground in the face of their respective revolts. British forces fought in Haiti in support of French planters until 1798; it may be that this work was produced in anticipation of returning the favor. (more details)