 |
|
|
|
|
D'ANVILLE, Jean Baptiste Bourguignon (1697-1782)
Africa, with All Its States, Kingdomes, Republics, Regions, Island &c. Improved and inlarged from D'Anville's map to which have been added a particular chart of the Gold Coast [on an inset larger scale map] wherein are distinguished all the european forts and factories by S. Boulton and also a summary description relative to the trade and natural produce, manners and customs of the African continent and islands
London: Robert Laurie & James Whittle, 1794. Copper-engraved map, on four joined sheets, with original outline colour, some splits to old folds, small tears at margins, one with slight loss, overall in good condition. Sheet size: 41 1/2 x 49 1/4 inches.
A fascinating late eighteenth-century wall map of Africa, after one of France's greatest cartographers
Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville was the spiritual successor to Guillaume De L'Isle in the sense that he maintained the rigorous standard for accuracy that De L'Isle had established. D'Anville was the last French mapmaker to establish an international reputation superior to all his contemporaries, as witnessed by the respect shown by English cartographers and publishers during an era when the two countries were often at war and always hostile to one another.
This excellent map of Africa, an English edition with revisions of D'Anville by Laurie & Whittle, was issued when the European appetite for exploration and colonization of the continent was just getting underway. By this time there were well over fifty fort/trading posts on the western and southeastern coasts representing various European nations, but there had been almost no penetration of the interior (these European `forts & factories' on the Gold Coast are shown in close up on Boulton's inset map). With the gradual outlawing of the slave trade by most civilized nations, interest in the vast interior regions greatly increased as whites sought other profitable resources, and Catholic and Protestant missionaries bravely evangelised.
The peoples of Africa proved much more diverse and intriguing than ever imagined, and some of the discoveries in this regard are included in the extensive texts that are interspersed amongst the geographic features shown on the map.
|
#10394 $2,500.00 
|
© 2002-2005 Donald A. Heald
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
