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Category: Mapping Africa

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A Colonial Demarcation Process. Investigating the Formation of the British-German Border between Nigeria and Cameroon

In 1903 a complaint by a British official about “leaking German-Cameroonian borders” (Weiss 2000: 168) reached Garoua, the centre of German colonial administration in German-Adamawa, Cameroon. More complaints from the British Protectorate of Nigeria followed but German officials rejected the accusations although they were aware of the ongoing slavery and cross-border slave trade (ibid.: 167–172). Why did the colonial border...

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Josef Menges and the Early Mapping of Somaliland

Josef Menges and German Exploration in the Horn of Africa Following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the coastal territories of the Horn of Africa became the focus of increasing interest by foreign powers, agencies, and individuals, who were attracted by the logistical, commercial, and geopolitical potential of these territories. Josef Menges (1850–1910), a Hessian, was one of...

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The Emergence of the Emin Pasha Gulf (Tanzania) as an Object of Hydrographic Knowledge

Africa’s largest lake, known to this day by its colonial name Lake Victoria, features an indentation in the south-west that many texts and maps refer to as Emin Pasha Gulf (Fig. 1). Located in the Tanzanian part of the lake, this indentation has a surface area of around 2,600 square kilometres and thus is about five times the size of...

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A Cartographer in the Archives. Ernst Debes’ Manuscript Map of Eduard Rüppell’s Abyssinian Journey (1867)

Maps are made from maps. This can also be traced in August Petermann’s commentary for his latest map of Northern Abyssinia in 1867, published in Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen (PGM). The senior cartographer of the Perthes publishing house in Gotha stated that an entirely new map had been made from a journey undertaken by Eduard Rüppell to this very area 35...

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The Map of Ethiopia by Hiob Ludolf and Abba Gorgoryos (1683) as a Source for Cultural Concepts and Indigenous Knowledge

The Orientalist Hiob Ludolf stands at the beginning of Ethiopian philology and early ethnographic research on north-east Africa. Ludolf’s works are remarkable in their richness of cultural information and their breadth. Especially his cooperation with the Ethiopian scholar and theologian Abba Gorgoryos is to be noted, who travelled from Rome to Gotha in 1652. With his help, Ludolf described the...

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Mapping the Source Region of the Abbay/Blue Nile

The Nile, which traverses about 6,825 kilometres, from its farthest and most remote source in southern Rwanda to the Mediterranean Sea, is the longest river system on earth. It comprises two major tributaries, the White Nile and the Abbay, also called Blue Nile. The Abbay contributes the lion’s share to the Nile’s annual water flow (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia...