The Africa Map Circle – Introduction & Digital Resource Directory

[This is an excerpt from an extended discussion about the role of Art, History, Art-History Librarianship and Museum Curatorship. For full conversation see: “Recovering A Looted Past ~ ‘Repatriating’ African History: Old Artifacts + Technology ~ New Communities + New Narratives in African History.”]

Online Research & Teaching with Africa Maps:
Tips, Techniques, Examples & Resources
T. C. Weiskel
(PDF)

See related:

• Introduction to the BU African Studies/Afriterra “Mapping Africa” Workshop
• Selected Online Links to the Africa Mapping Project
• Learning Under Lockdown: Some Tools & Tips for Online Learning About Africa & the World
• Mapping the Slave Trade: 1556-1823 – A Digital Humanities Project
• What is the “Africa Map Circle?” What does it Do? What can it help me do? [Excerpt of “Looted Past”]
• The African Historical Graphics Archive
• The Africa Map Circle – a brief introduction.
  and
• The Africa Map Circle – “Explorations”

See as well the online documents in support of specific online “Map Chats” of the Africa Africa Map Circle:

• Historical Cartography in the Digital Age: Imaging Senegal – The Last 500 Years ~ New Technologies, New Questions, New Communities

For a discussion of how these digital resources can be used for collaborative research and teaching of a wide range of topics in African studies see:

• Maps, Stones & Plants: Agents of Empire and the Ecology of the Atlantic Trade

A substantial new trans-Atlantic contribution has been made through the creation in Britain of:

• The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery

particularly for the maps relating to the Caribbean.

In addition see:

• Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division | The New York Public Library

Library of Congress

The New York Public Library

Stanford Libraries:

University of Illinois

Northwestern University

Yale University – Digital Collections – Africa–Maps–Early works to 1800

UT Library Online Perry-Castañeda Map Collection – Africa

Antique maps of Africa – Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc.

Oxford – Bodleian Digitized Historical Maps of Africa

Afriterra

with thumbnails

See related Map Societies and Map Library organizations in the United States:

• Boston: http://bostonmapsociety.org/
• California: https://californiamapsociety.org/
• Chicago: https://www.chicagomapsociety.org/
• New York: http://newyorkmapsociety.org/
• Phillips: https://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/phillips.html
• Rocky Mountain: https://www.rmmaps.org/
• Washington: http://www.washmapsociety.org/
  and
• the Western Association of Map Libraries

Most of the discussion of African historical cartography in the western world has been confined to comparative studies of maps drawn by different privately or publicly funded European cartographers.  The Africa Map Circle hopes to extend its scope to the consideration of other sources of African cartography as well including maps like this one,  about which, as yet, we know next to nothing.  As a group we depend upon participants who have the skills to interpret these documents to help us understand their meaning and significance.

The origin, cartographer, publisher, date of publication and significance of this map remain unknown to those who do not work in Arabic.  It is hoped that the evident limitations of current African historical cartography can be overcome by those with expertise in this realm contributing to the shared and cumulative discussions of the The Africa Map Circle.

See related:

• Spanning Oceans – Bridging Traditions: Libraries, the Global Humanities & the “Overview Effect” in a Digitized World
  and
• A Short Overview of Emerging Digital Technologies for Research & Teaching in African History & Cultural Studies