Angola In Old Maps

Angola, a country located in the southwest of the African continent, has a history that goes back a long way. Unlike the interior of Africa, which was not explored until the nineteenth century, Angola is located on the Atlantic coast, and this area was made known to the world through explorers much earlier.

History is typically thought of as being recorded in writings. However, in addition to books, maps can also be used as a vehicle for recording history. As a combination of graphics, images, and text, maps are able to convey a wide variety of information. Every map has its purpose. Cartographers in the past would use maps to record the course of rivers, the location of cities, the routes of explorers, the distribution of colonies, or some other information. Therefore, maps have played an indispensable role in transmitting information in the past and exploring history today. Each old map can bring us a 'story'.

Maps always have to be looked at bearing in mind the perspective of the culture and time of its makers. Here we trace the story of Angola in maps through the eyes of European travelers, cartographers, and those influencing the making of them such as publishers or government authorities.

The map QUARTA AFRICAE TABULA from Ptolemy brings the beginning of our journey.

The work  Geography  by Ptolemy contains four maps depicting Africa, of which the one above is the fourth. However, before getting into his maps, let us take a brief look at the cartographer Ptolemy and the work Geography.

 Ptolemy  (ca. A.D. 90-168) is well known as a mathematician, astronomer, and geographer. It is now widely believed that he was born in Upper Egypt and lived in Alexandria, but in fact his birth date and place have not been definitively confirmed.

Among the treatise he wrote, there is a work called Geography. Geography contains knowledge of cartography:  lines of longitude and latitude  were introduced for the first time; in this work, Ptolemy also instructed people how to make maps [1]. Meanwhile, Geography is also a gazetteer, and it contains maps depicting the known world in detail. The work Geography was based on the previous work by the geographer Marinas of Tyre, and Ptolemy used information from the gazetteers of the Roman and ancient Persian Empire; at the same time, he would collect data from travelers [2]. As a work of Scientific, Geography had a great impact at that time [3].

Later at the end of the fourteenth century, Geography was brought to Italy and translated into Latin between 1406 and 1409. The Latin version of Geography became very popular and many editions spread across Europe [3].

The edition we are discussing is the one published by Johannes Reger.

The Ptolemaic map above depicts the whole continent of Africa as it was known at the time. As we can see, the northern part of the continent is already roughly outlined as we know it, but the area to the south is still a mystery by comparison. However, we can still find a few special terms in the southern part of the map.

Together with the different editions of Geography, modern maps began to appear. It must be said that the 'modern maps' here do not mean the maps we use today. As more and more of the world was explored, it was recognized that Ptolemy's maps did not accurately depict the real world. Cartographers of the time would use the latest information to create new maps and add them when editing Geography, which was called 'modern maps' [3].

The map above is one of the versions of Ptolemy's fourth map of Africa, from an edition of the Geographia published by Bernardus Sylvanus in 1511.

The map above, published by Münster, is a 'modern map'. Although some cartographers had already added modern maps to Geographia, Münster was the first to add a map of the continent, namely a map showing the complete continent of Africa as it was known at the time.

From this map, on one hand, we can see that people at that time already had a basic understanding of the African continent, that is, the cartographers could draw a complete outline of the continent; but on the other hand, people still knew very little about this continent. For example, Tellus ptisacorum was drawn by the cartographers on the southwest coast, meaning 'land of the parrots'; the creature Monoculi above refers to the one-eyed creature. These legendary creatures on the map mean that it was still a mysterious area for people.

One good choice to learn more about the legendary creatures is  The Ebstorf Map  from the thirteenth century. On the right of this map, which refers to the south in the world, there are varieties of legendary and mythical persons or animals described.

In 1570 Abraham Ortelius published the  Theatrum Orbis Terrarum , which is considered to be the first modern atlas. The map above is included in Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.

 Abraham Ortelius  is a famous Dutch geographer, cartographer, as well as collector, and trader. Ortelius is considered one of the founders of Dutch cartography. His work Theatrum Orbis Terrarum was widely praised and known because of the high standards of the maps and the broad area covered [5]. Today the publication of  Theatrum Orbis Terrarum  is considered to be the beginning of the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography.

Besides the content of the map itself, another message conveyed by this map,  The Golden Age of Netherlandish Cartography , also has significance for discussion. With the Dutch expeditions around the world, Dutch cartography entered a golden age between the late 16th century and the late 17th century. During that time Dutch cartographers produced and published a great number of exquisite atlases that revealed the face of many unknown lands for people. And Abraham Ortelius is one of the representatives of the golden age of Netherlandish cartography.

With Abraham Ortelius, another person we have to mention when talking about maps of the Congo Kingdom in the sixteenth century is Filippo Pigafetta.

The Italian Pigafetta was not only a humanist and diplomat but also a geographer and traveler. Pigafetta published Relationel del Reama di Congo et delle circonvicine contrade (A Report of the Kingdom of Congo and its neighboring Regions) in 1591. This book records the description of the Congo Kingdom by the Portuguese explorer Duarte Lopez, a man who traveled through the Congo Kingdom from 1578 to 1584. In this book, information on the hydrology, topography, as well as distribution of some important cities in and around the Kingdom of Congo in the 16th century are presented. The hydrology in Pigafetta's map was used as a model by subsequent mapmakers until the 18th century. Although Pigafetta published the map of the Congo region as early as 1591, what we now see is the latter Latin edition published in 1598 [7].

In 1595 Ortelius published a map of North Africa in Theatrum, and he inset a map of Congo sent to him by Pigafitta in the upper left corner of this map. The hydrological system of Pigafetta had a significant impact on the work of subsequent cartographers, thanks also to Ortelius, who was famous at the time and added this map of the Congo region as a reduced image to his work [3].

Let us now turn our attention to the maps of the seventeenth century.

The map NOVA AFRICAE GEOGRAPHICA ET HYDROGRAPHICA DESCRIPTIO published by the Dutch cartographer Willem Jansz Blaeu in 1644 is another example of 'The Golden Age of Netherlandish Cartography'.

In comparison with the last map, the Congo Kingdom on this map has not changed much in terms of toponymy or hydrological system.

Cartes générales de toutes les parties du monde, published by Nicolas Sanson, is considered the first French world atlas, with seven maps of Africa, including continental and regional maps. The one we present here is one of the regional maps.

This French cartographer  Nicolas Sanson  drew about 300 maps in his lifetime. He led French cartography to the golden age and was known as the 'Father of French Cartography'.

In 1662 the Dutch cartographer Joan Bleau published Atlas Maior, the most prestigious atlas of all time, containing about 600 maps. The one we are discussing is called REGNA CONGO ET ANGOLA, which includes the Congo and Angola areas.

Here we will introduce another map from Nicolas Sanson: ROYAUME DE CONGO, one of a series of small atlases published in 1662 (third edition).

Let us start our map story of the 18th century with the map from Guillaume Delisle.

The maps of this French cartographer  Guillaume Delisle  have always been known for their accuracy. As a student at the French Académie des Sciences, where he learned modern earth measurement techniques, and because of his family's and his reputation, Delisle always had access to the records from explorers and travelers returning from all over the world. These records provided him with the latest information for his cartography. At the same time, Delisle himself was also a very rigorous cartographer. When he could not confirm the source of the information on his map, he would mark it clearly on the map.

Now let us take a look at Delisle's map CARTE DU CONGO ET DU PAYS DES CAFRES, published in 1708.

It is unarguable that the cartography of Africa made the most progress in the nineteenth century. During this century, more and more explorers entered Africa, and mapmakers had access to more detailed information about the interior areas of this continent. At the same time, cartographers began to present legends or other additional information on maps that means the development of cartographic standards.

The first one we will discuss in the nineteenth century is the map called AFRIQUE, published in 1850 by the French cartographer Victor Levasseur.

Although on this map, which itself is only 20x20 cm in size, the author has marked very little information on the interior of the continent. What attracts our attention is the pyramid on the left, which lists the population of some areas. As we can see, Angola, Congo et Mozambique 500,000, meaning that the population of Angola, Congo, and Mozambique is 500,000, which is the first time the map has population information in our story.

On this map of Africa, published by the French cartographer A. Vuillemin in 1857, we can find some texts with other valuable information. Eighteen vignettes on either side of the map provide some statistics for various regions in Africa.

From the 1880s onwards, due to the exploration of its natural resources, European countries became more interested in Africa and gradually explored and colonized the interior of the continent, whereas before that European sphere of influence in Africa was limited to the coastal areas. Therefore, cartographers of this period also devoted themselves to mapping land distribution under colonial in Africa.

One of these works is the following map CARTE DU BASSIN CONGO, published by the German cartographer Richard Kiepert in 1885.

In 1884/85, fifteen countries, including Germany, Belgium, and France, met in Germany at the Berlin Conference to discuss colonization and trade in Africa. On this map, Kiepert recorded the distribution of colonies in the Congo region in 1885 and the routes of some explorers.

One notable point on this map is the Portuguese colonization of Cabinda. At that time, Cabinda and Angola were still independent of each other. While having already established the colony in Angola, Portugal declared its sovereignty over Cabinda in 1885.

Two other maps are worth mentioning here: one from Weiland, published in 1840 (left), the other also from Kiepert (right), published in 1846. Both maps are from the same publisher Geographisches Institut. Weiland's map, published in 1840, records the information sent back by the explorer Douville. However, Kiepert explained in a map published shortly afterward that the information from Douville was a lie for no reason. Through information obtained from Portuguese and Arab traders, the researcher Gooley Desborough proved that the information provided by Douville is not true and Kiepert has republished a corrected map with an explanation in the upper right corner of the map.

The map SPEZIAL-KARTE VON AFRIKA above is one of a series of maps of Africa that Justus Perthes' Geographischer Anstalt of Germany edited and published for the third time in 1893. The series contains twelve maps covering various continent regions, and the one shown here depicts the Congo and Angola regions.

As Germany began to establish colonies in Africa, more and more German explorers began to travel into the interior of Africa.

The map above, also published by Justus Perthes' Geographischer Anstalt, shows us in detail the routes taken by German explorers in Africa during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Now let us enter the last phase of our map story: the twentieth century.

Apart from the explorer's route, the map topic of the twentieth century continued to be dominated by the distribution of colonial powers. As the world wars began and ended, there were changes in the distribution of the colonies of the European powers in Africa, and these were recorded on the maps. However, this is not the point we want to discuss. Apart from the colonial distribution, we still try to find some other exciting information from the map.

Like the last two maps, this one is still from Justus Perthes' Geographischer Anstalt and was published in 1906.

At the top of the map are recorded the years and places of birth and death of the 14 explorers. The eight maps at the bottom chart the routes of 56 explorers in Africa from 1800 to 1900.

Nowadays, cartographic technology has reached a new level. The advent of digital maps has made maps more accessible. At the same time, map themes have become more and more varied. The maps below show us some of these themes. In addition to basic themes such as open streets and topography, maps with specific themes can help people get the information more quickly and accurately. For example, we can use maps to find the best routes rapidly, get information about the ecological classification of the land, or track the spread of infectious diseases. Of course, there are also satellite maps that allow us to view of the planet we live on. Today, maps have become an essential tool in our life. (All the maps below are provided by  ArcGIS MapStory .)

The old maps from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries that transformed Africa from a mysterious land to a familiar continent in the eyes of the reader, these old maps from the European cartographers not only record the changes on the African continent but also show the development of the European cartography of the past centuries. And these old maps also take us on a fantastic journey. We hope that readers can get to know Angola in history and the development of cartography in such an interesting way through these beautiful old maps.

REFERENCES

[1] J. B. Harley, D. Woodward, Eds., The History of Cartography: The Culmination of Greek Cartography in Ptolemy, Vol. 1. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1987.

[2] “The Ptolemaic Geography of Africa,” Nature, vol. 43, no. 1115, pp. 448–449, Mar. 1891, doi:  10.1038/043448a0 

[3] W. Bodenstein, Exploring Africa with ancient maps. Tervuren, Belgium: Royal Museum for Central Africa, 2017.

 [4] J. A. Spicer, N. Z. Davis, K. J. P. Lowe, B. Vinson, Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, Md.), and Princeton University, Eds., Revealing the African presence in Renaissance Europe. Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, 2012.

 [5] C. Mukerji, “Printing, cartography and conceptions of place in Renaissance Europe,” Media, Culture & Society, vol. 28, no. 5, pp. 651–669, Sep. 2006, doi:  10.1177/0163443706067020 .

 [6] J. Ball, “The History of Angola,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, Oxford University Press, 2017. doi:  10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.180 .

 [7] R. L. Betz, The mapping of Africa: a cartobibliography of printed maps of the African continent to 1700. ’t Goy-Houten: Hes & de Graaf, 2007.

 [8] R. H. Major, “On the Map of Africa Published in Pigafetta’s ‘Kingdom of Congo,’ in 1591,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. 11, no. 6, p. 246, 1866, doi:  10.2307/1799242 .

 [9] R. Revermann and Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management, Eds., Climate change and adaptive land management in southern Africa: assessments, changes, challenges, and solutions. Göttingen, Germany ; Windhoek, Namibia: Klaus Hess Publishers, 2018.

 [10] Thomas, G.P.. 2019. Angola: Mining, Minerals and Fuel Resources. AZoMining, viewed 13 September 2021, https://www.azomining.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=86.