Hist 4339

Society and Ethnicity in Africa

Map Reading Methodology (d’Anville’s 1749 map of Africa)

• Map as text which can be read for contemporary attitudes and beliefs

• Production: author, methods of gathering info, historical context

• Content: decoration, color, depiction of boundary lines

• Reception: audience, expense and availability, function and use

Production

• Creator: Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782), eminent French geographer

• d’Anville’s innovative use of blank space

◦ vs earlier “imaginative cartography,” satirized in 1733 by Jonathan Swift:

                        So Geographers, in Afric-maps,

                        With savage-pictures fill their gaps;

                        And o’er unhabitable downs

                        Place elephants for want of towns.                On Poetry, i.117[1]

Content

• Warning re blank space

• Use of information from “Oriental” geographers

• Most detail provided for coastal areas, North Africa, and Nile area

Reception

• Map survival, multiple atlas editions indicate popularity

• Atlas expense indicates audience was wealthy

• As documents representing height of scientific knowledge, also widely copied

[map by Anville, Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d.  Composite.  Afrique [map].  1749.  1:830,000.  “David Rumsey Map Collection.”]