Afr ll Tab from Tabulae Geographicae or Continet Africam minorem

       This beautiful map of Madagascar is by Olfert Dapper.  The beauty of this island is it broke off from the supercontinent Gondwana some 88 million years ago which allowed natural selection time for the island to create fauna and animals unique onto itself.  Madagascar is the 4th largest Island and the second largest Island nation in the world.  It lies some 250 miles across the Mozambique Channel from continental Africa with the Indian Ocean to its East.  Mozambique is displayed in the upper left.  It is documented the first European to reach this area was Diogo Dias in 1500, a Portuguese sea captain during the Portuguese India Armadas.  The Island was generally governed by nobility until 1897 when it was governed by France but ultimately gained sovereignty in 1960  as a democratic republic.

        Olfert Dapper was born in 1636 in Amsterdam, Netherlands and passed in 1689 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.  It is maintained that he never even left Amsterdam.  More impressive than that is his atlas

in 1668 called "Description of Africa".  It was considered the most influential atlas of Africa of its time and perhaps up until its time.   In fact, in Paris, the Museum Dapper named after him opened in 1986 and  a street was named Dapperstraat in Amsterdam.  He also published books about China, India, Persia, Georgia and Arabia.  In some venues his accolades have been questioned over time.  Olfert had not been to Africa but that was usually the case with a lot of cartographers with respect to their publications.  It is also said that some of  his geographical informants and notes are not verifiable because they are nonexistent which of course probably had happened during this period in frequency due to turnover and disorganization  conical to lack of faculty in the private sector.  I would urge one to read an article called "Decompiling Dapper: a Preliminary Search for Evidence" by Adam Jones.  It is an interesting look at Olfert's "Description of Africa".  Aside from things considered it puts perspective on what it took to put an Atlas together in the 17th century.  John Ogilby bought Dapper's plates of Africa two years later to use in his Atas called "Africa" in 1670.  Ogilby, an affluent man perhaps bought more than the plates from the struggling entrepreneur.  In any event,  all of Olfert's contacts appear to be accounted for in this map for, he spent a lot of time on Madagascar for his atlas history has revealed. 

    This 1677 map is by Pierre Du Val.  In the south this rangy map starts at the straight of Gibraltar in the West and ends East near the border of present day Tunisia.  Northward it starts at the strait  and heads Northeast up the coast of Spain to Peniscola,  a municipality of Spain with the name remaining the same to this day.  The map also shows the Balearic Islands of Formentera, Ibiza, Majorca and Cabrera.

     Pierre Du Val  (1618-1683)  was born In Abbeville, France.  His uncle was Nicolas Sanson.  Nicolas Sanson served under two kings and was considered the "Father of French Cartography",  a term probably overused because he was.  With Sanson's tutelage Pierre became "Geographe du Roy" Priveledge to his Majesty as noted on the map. 

     What a perilous time it was for shipping during this period.  The Barbary Coast term was used for the coast of North Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries.  According to the  BBC, governments of the the Barbary Coast authorized Corsair pirate attacks on shipping of Christian countries to the tune of almost 500 vessels between 1616 and 1625. There is a list printed in London by Joseph Morgan that includes 160 British ships taken between 1677 and 1680 by Algerians.  The sailors from these commandeers most often were put to slavery.  It is estimated that between 1530 and 1780  there may have been some 1.2 million put to slavery from Spain, Italy and Britain at the hand of the Corsairs and  the Barbary states.  During this time about 150,000 West Africans had been captured and put into 

slavery and it was only just ramping up.  

     In April 1805 the United States in it's first  offensive military  action overseas,  sent the Marines and U.S. Navy to embattle and eliminate the Barbary pirates as well as free American slaves in the Battle of Derna.  The Marines Hymm "From the Halls of Mentezuma to the Shores of Tripoli" is reference to this 

Battle. 

     This intriguing 1670 map is by John Ogilby.  The map traces the coast of current day of west Africa from Guinea in the west to Gabon in the east.  This map is part of volume 1 of 5 commissioned by King Charles II in conjunction with Ogilby between 1670 and 1673 which were to include descriptions of the whole world as it was known through pre-existing European knowledge.  The plate for this  map was  produced by Olfert Dapper from William Bleua's plate with minor exceptions and the publication's intent was to provide a broad overview of the continent of Africa to the European populist.  

      It is suggested that in the 1500's the Portuguese were the first to claim slaves out of west Africa.  The Portuguese during this period were the most aggressive in their exploration in their quest for spices, indigo and anything profitable to suffice their gentry with gains of the day.  In fact, it is well documented that it was a ship called the White Lion of England that commandeered  the first African slaves to go to America off the Portuguese ship Sao Joao Bautista on its route to Mexico.    John Jope  Captained the White Lion to the Virginia colony  where his captives were sold as indentured servants in June of 1619 which now represents the beginnings of slavery in North America.   The  pirating  in the   Mediterranean to acquire contraband and sailors into slavery within the 150 years prior to this map,  would be dwarfed by the West African Slave trade.  The timing and proximity of the slave coast  to Europe and the Americas changed the dynamics of the slave trade.   The map shows an acute awareness of the ports of the Gold Coast, Slave Coast and the Ivory Coast, with the interiors more abstract with adornments of native species predominant over geographically named places and tribes.  The allure of depictions of lions, elephants, cheetahs, and apes on the map would no doubt bemuse the European populist, but the larger composition of this map with respect to the prior lends itself to the lesser known aspects of the slave coast itself.  The vast majority of the 12.5 million slaves taken from West Africa were captured by raids and war by Africans looking to profit off of the slave trade.  Europeans received these slaves at the ports acutely noted on this map and rarely ventured to the interior because they didn't have to.   A  lot of the text from Ogilby's Africa is  bigoted, but it gives a spotlight on African History by definition of the time retrospective of today.  

Informational sources from British Library, British Broadcasting History, British Broadcasting Company,  digital history.uh.edu, and  wikipedia

     A incomparable map of 18th century Morocco.  Made in Nuremburg in 1728 by the Homann Heirs Company and it ranges from the Strait of Gibraltar  and Tangier south to the Sahara Desert.  The map includes the Canary Islands and has an inset  of the Islands of Madera.  Right of the title cartouche is an impressive scene of the Atlas Mountains with Tangier at the base with two ships in the straight firing their cannons reflective of the flux within the Mediterranean at the time.  There is a figure of a head  at the peak of the mountains representing the belief that the range is actually the body of the Titan Atlas after being turned to stone by Perseus  via Geek Mythology.  This map is so detailed it shows dozens of desert tribes and their domains as well as what as what seems like infinitesimal place names for which I have spent hours looking up just a few .  Very captivating.  Most intriguing to me are the insets at the bottom.  At left bottom is the city of Morocco as it is on the map or known locally as Marrakech.  There is a column that correlates a particular line item alphabetically with a building or place within the city scene.   For example, line item "A" reads "Grose thurn am palast auf welchen der konig zupferdt reizen".  It transaltes to "Big tower at the Palace which the King resides".  That tower has an "A" above it.  The map is in 18th century German which takes a little while to translate but the most important aspect of the map , I feel, is the bottom right inset.   The city of Mequinetz or Meknes.  I believe the reason why this city is on this map is because of Ismail Ibn Sharif,  one of the greatest purveyors of maritime piracy in the history of the world. He also created  the Habs Qara, a prison of Christian slaves that held an estimated 60,000 prisoners to be used at his disposal not to mention his 500 or so concubines.  

       Sharif was born in 1645 and passed in Meknes March of 1727, one year before this map was published.  Much like the Palestinians and the American Indians of this time the Berber or Bedouin  tribes were nomadic in nature.  Sharif's intention was to consolidate  all factions with one ruler under the Alaouite  Dynasty started by his father, who was born a slave, which is still the Royal Family in power today.  After the British abandoned Tangier in 1684 Ismail took over the port through his army of slaves and allegiances called the Black Army.  This pivot by the British was directly attributable to the much more lucrative Atlantic Slave Trade ramped up twenty years prior.  With this strategic port Ismail scaled up his piracy of European merchant ships almost to the extent of the Algerians.  The commandeering  of these ships were so prevalent that European countries paid Barbary Coast States not  to attack them with most times to no avail.  It is estimated that under Ismail's tenure he had as much as 225,000 European slaves captured by his corsairs at one time under his authority.  

      With respect to this map I am going to cut to the chase, in fact go out on a limb.  The reason why  Mequinetz is on this map is because Ismail during his reign designated this city as the capital of Morocco.  Furthermore I believe the  figure on the left facing the title cartouche with the Sultan robe is Ismail.  I believe the figure to the right with a slave at his feet is his son,  Moulay Abdallah.  Moulay inherited the throne after his father's death .  This assertion in antique map avenues would be unique which would make the importance as well as perhaps the value of this particular map higher than current market value.

       This mapmaker Johann Homann was genius in his approach to his maps.  Many times he connected historical events with what is now  the distant past with his maps which enables us today to revisit those events that were otherwise only registered through text.  For Johann as well as many mapmakers of this time, world events were as saleable as the maps themselves especially since most of the world had been charted by this point.    In 1720 European literacy rates were approaching 70%, good timing.

      This map is as published.  It was normal for terrestrial areas to be hand colored depicting regional occupation or governance without color to the cartouche. 

      A  chart of Calabar, Nigeria Africa.  Just the name Calabar conjures up  untouched forests with low lying fruit,  slow moving rivers only disturbed by the breach of the vast array of fish and the mystical presence of indigenous people so sparse you wouldn't even know they were there.  That was generally true until the early 16th century when the Effiat, Lbibio, Efik, Qua, and Efut people moved to the area from the Northern Uruan area and the East from the Cameroons.  These groups brought back to their North and West markets fish, produce, palm oil and even salt they had made.  Subsistence fishing and trade only last so long between multiple groups vying in the same 20 mile area and malcontent comes in many forms.  The Efik people took over Ikot Itunko (Creek Town), Obutong (Old Town), and Atakpa (Duke Town) through multiple forms of attrition.  It is documented that the name Efik was given to them by their rivals meaning "to oppress or suppress".   Waters of the Cross River region  provided deep enough water for merchant ships and in 1645 the first documented merchant class ship arrived from England.  The Efik Kings and Queens were "monopolistic middlemen" of this area, taking in domestic products and indigenous people caught by indigenous people and selling to merchants at the ports.  By the turn of the eighteenth century the ports could export 2000 to  3000 slaves and five to ten tons of Ivory annually in exchange for copper bars.  The Dutch East India Company dedicated two ships to this area alone but The Royal African Company of England prevailed in its monopoly of the area in its quest for slave labor in the West Indies and particularly Barbados. In 1815 the 1806 HMS Comus, of the Royal Navy,  was part of the blockade of Africa to end slavery as part of the Trade act of 1807at these ports.  She  captured 10 Spanish and Portuguese slave ships and freed 500-1000 slaves effectively ending the slave trade in Calabar. 

      This circa 1770 map is by Dutch draughtsman and engraver Jacob Van der Schley (1715- 1779).  He studied under Bernard Picart (1673-1733) and had publications in The Hague between 1735 and 1747.

He is probably most noted for the plates in Abbe Prevost's (1697-1763)  "Histoire generale des voyages" for which sadly wasn't finished until after Prevost's death. The map is dated 1699 which is based on the voyage of James Barbot and John Grazihier to Kalabar, Bandi and the Doni Rivers in that year. 

Informational sources from Cambridge Library of the UK (African Merchants , Notables and the Slave Trade at Old Calabar, 1720: Evidence from the National Archives of Scotland ), Wikipedia, Britannica