(re)Mapping Africa: Colonial cartography collection soon ready for search
Describing almost 1400 Africa maps in three months. It’s no small task that student assistants Artemis Mantheakis and Beatriz Veiga have been working on within the joint ASCL-UBL Africa Maps Project. The project’s aim is to describe and catalogue a 20th-century map collection of the library of the African Studies Centre, that is housed in the Special Collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL).
The student assistants have strong ties to Africa: Artemis is from Tanzania and recently graduated from the Research Master African Studies at Leiden University. She is currently pursuing a Master in Political Economy at the University of Amsterdam. Beatriz is from Mozambique and is a Master student of African Studies in Leiden.
The two of them work in an office in the University Library (UB). In front of them are maps of the former British colonial Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland – a territory now covering Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe. There is a separate ‘hunting’ map, a map indicating ‘natural farming areas’, a ‘rainfall utilization’ map, just to mention a few of the themes that were rendered in maps – all dating from the 1950s to 1960s.
Meticulously and systematically
The more than thousand maps they describe and catalogue are all from the 20th century. They are part of the map collection of the Library of the African Studies Centre, which is housed in the UB. The collection consists of several series. For example, the Africa maps from the World Maps Series, initiated by the American military after many African countries became independent (particularly in 1960), and in which mostly British and occasionally French military services were involved. Meticulously and systematically, using squares on the larger map of the entire continent, Artemis and Beatriz move from west to east, and from the equator to the south in describing the maps that they’ve received.
This collection of the African Studies Centre very well supplements the Africa maps in the UBL collection, says Martijn Storms, UBL curator for Maps & Atlases. ‘We have Africa maps dating from other periods. For example in the collection of Bodel Nijenhuis, a 19th century collector, we have maps dating from the 16th to 19th centuries. Other maps from Africa, mainly from the 20th century, can be found in the collection of the former library of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), that the UBL was able to partly acquire in 2013.’
An extra layer
The African Studies Centre collection contains both topographical and thematic maps, which show a variety of subjects: languages, peoples, resources, agricultural produce. There is something very special about these maps, according to Storms. ‘Several researchers that donated their maps to the library of the ASCL over the years, annotated or added information when they used the maps.’ For example, human geographer Leo de Haan (later director of the ASCL), who focused his research on rural and urban livelihoods in Africa in the 1970s, added notes to his maps. ‘This information makes the maps more detailed,’ Storms observes, ‘it adds a layer to a map.’
Names of cartographers
So what do the student assistants describe? ‘A lot’, they say, laughing. ‘Names of countries, regions, the titles of the maps, subtitles, and scales’, Beatriz elaborates. ‘We do not include the colonial name, unless it is in the title. We label the geographic areas of the map according to the countries’ modern names. And of course, we include the metadata codes from the ASCL Thesaurus and from the Thesaurus of Geographical Names (TGN), that are used for content description, both by theme and area.’ If existing, they add the names of cartographers, printing agencies, and sheet numbers.
‘We use Google Earth and Bounding Box (a practical online tool to generate the geographical coordinates of the area covered by the map) to locate the coordinates and thereby the countries in the map, because some maps contain several countries but do not list them’, Artemis explains. She points to the sheet containing maps of the colonial ‘Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland’ again. ‘You often see that some areas on the maps remained white, because the colonial country or office of publication, such as the British Colonial Office, did not have the surveying rights to other colonial territories.’
Colonial past lives on
According to Martijn Storms, this collection shows a colonial mapping of Africa. ‘The maps of North West Africa for example, where France had several colonies, were made by the Institut géographique national. This continued even after those countries had become independent. So, the colonial past lives on in these maps.’ This becomes clear when you take a closer look at the French maps. Beatriz: ‘They are very detailed, reflecting the fact that there was huge bureaucracy in the mapping process. Other countries made their own maps after they gained independence, for instance Tanzania, and these maps have a more nationalist outlook.’
City planning
What are the favourite maps of Beatriz and Artemis? Beatriz: ‘I like the Mozambican maps most. What I found particularly interesting is the city planning, and comparing it to the ways the city has grown over the years.’ Artemis: ‘I am fascinated by the fact that those maps of Tanzania were specifically made by the Tanzanian government and not by foreign authorities after independence. Even in the American World Map Series, Tanzania was the only country that made their own maps, which says something specific about the unique and nationalist way Tanzania managed their territory.’
Liesbeth Kanis, Head of the Library at the African Studies Centre Leiden, is delighted the project is nearing completion. This was one of the first projects she initiated in her role as new Head. ‘It is a wonderful example of a collaborative project together with the UBL.’
Coming soon!
The Africa Maps will become available in the catalogue soon.
In the meantime, you may also be interested in these two online collections:
Colonial Africa in official statistics: 1821 - 1953
Reporting on Africa: from apartheid to pan-Africanism, 1949 - 1995