Thomas J. Bassett

The history of cartography of Africa privileges European mapmakers, giving little attention to Indigenous mapping. To correct this omission, this exhibit demonstrates how European mapmakers relied heavily on Africans who shared their geographical knowledge in the form of oral maps, ground maps, and written itineraries. In addition, the content of European maps was significantly shaped by African rulers who granted or denied Europeans permission to pass through their territories. Those who denied permission enforced blank spaces on European maps. These Indigenous mapping and political influences are evident in Captain Louis-Gustave Binger’s Map of the Upper-Niger to the Gulf of Guinea. This geo-referenced and digitized version of Binger’s map highlights his travel route in green, the routes explored by other Europeans in black, and the routes he obtained from African informants in purple. A geographic information system (GIS) measurement of the length of these itineraries indicates that African sources account for 74% of the total routes. The blank spaces in the northeastern and southwestern sections are areas where regional chiefs barred Binger’s entry. The blank spaces and digital analysis of routes demonstrate how Binger’s map is a co-construction of European and African mapping practices and political negotiations.

Thomas Bassett writes on the political ecology of agrarian change in West Africa and the history of cartography of Africa. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography & GIS and former Director of the LAS Global Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His writings on the history of cartography focus on Indigenous mapping, administrative mapping, road mapping, and mapping and land privatization in Africa.

He has contributed to three volumes of the History of Cartography and is currently working on a book on the role of mapping in France’s colonial conquest of 19th century West Africa.