|
|
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
Maps in the Making: Cognitive Pathways and Missionary Cartography in 19th and 20th Century West Africa
| Panel |
70. Trading Places: Knowledge Production and Transfer between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa - the Missionary Context
|
| Paper ID | 325 |
| Author(s) |
Thomas, Guy
|
| Paper |
No paper submitted
|
| Abstract | Maps from the colonial period, along with colonial and missionary photography, arguably provide some of the most conspicuous visual evidence of western concepts of spatial formation, territoriality and supremacy. This applies to much of the African continent. We could indeed establish a telling correlation between the production of maps and, to borrow a challenging dictum, the invention of Africa.
Yet the maps in question, much like photographs, are by no means solely or chiefly to be considered the work of European officials, traders or missionaries. Instead, they usually conceal - and at times reveal - complex processes of acquiring information by means of plugging into relevant sources of indigenous knowledge. As such, knowledge from African societies is exported, reshaped and inserted into published maps, often leaving African authorship camouflaged beneath the formal layer of publication procedures and standards. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to retrace links between the resourcefulness of indigenous knowledge commonly distributed throughout expeditions involved in mapping African territories on the one side and the recording and production of cartographic information and representations by the European participants on the other.
Missionary cartography is of particular interest in that mission fields often developed into closely meshed webs of stations and outstations spread over large areas. Considerable attention was given to questions of orientation, transport and accessibility both at a macro-regional level and notably at a micro-regional and local level. This resulted in a high degree of dependency among European missionaries on reliable informants. The thrust of the paper is directed at the interface of such encounters and, more broadly, at what can be dubbed the "joint biographies" of missionary maps. A case study from Cameroon will provide the basis for a more general discussion on knowledge production and transfer between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa in the context of missionary cartography in the 19th and 20th centuries.
|
|