Of maps and mappings

Maps are tricky things for historians. We used to use them for a long time. They are marvelous for putting complex issues in one single picture, to illustrate and to convince of our arguments. They help us to set the backstage of our stories (and therefore we often tend to neglect it). But maps are problematic, too. It is its supposed simplicity of representation, its abstract pureness that evokes and promises to us objectivity. The abstractness and simplicity of maps results in an opaqueness that veils the process of its making.

Map of the Bahr el Ghasal region according to Wilhelm Junker, compiled by Hassenstein

One major illusion about maps is that they are representing something like a fixed essence or state of knowledge. They do not. Map-making in the 19^th century was a very arduous, complicated and  multi-layered project, which included a lot of people starting from travelers like Henry Morton Stanley and their entourage of their Europeans fellows and African companions to the editors of the travel accounts, the cartographers, drawers, mathematicians, translators  as well as print workers, lithographers and experts for color mixing. The knowledge of maps underwent a long way from the pages of the traveler’s sketchbook to the printed map. On each stage, different ways of producing and representing knowledge came into play. Different actors with different horizons of knowledge and agendas selected, edited and redraw what would be shown on the map and how.  

The production of maps in the Carthographic institute at Gotha 

Most travelers of the 19^th century were rather new to the practice of cartography. At best, they got some initial knowledge during their service in the military. This initial training was indeed a reason why active or former officers were prominent among 19^th century explorers. Nevertheless, cartography itself was a technology of representation that underwent dramatic changes during the 18^th and 19^th century. 

Map of Africa by Ptolomeus (150 a.d.)

Maps, once been inhabited by mythical creatures like two-headed animals or tailed humans, increasingly became a place for scientific codes and representations. Astronomy, mathematics, geography, history and ethnography became the main means to built the encyclopedic design of maps. The invention or improvement of measuring devices like thermometers, sextants, or theodolits and the introduction of new ways of measuring like triangulation radically changed the practice of cartography in the 19^th century. 

Instruments for carthographs in the 18th century

Cartographers and travelers, therefore, were bound in constant process of learning. Handbooks for scientific practice and traveling helped the travelers to keep up with the newest requirements of cartography. Many things, nevertheless, were simply learning by doing.

Sketches of routes by Wilhelm Junker (in the Bahr-El-Ghasal-Region)

Still at the end of the 19^th century, counting steps was an important way to measure distances. It was an laborious and self-disciplining exercise for many travelers, who faced not only inhabitable and scarcely developed regions, but also shortages of food, illnesses and many conflicts with the local population. The first products of this measurement were logbooks with the distances the explorers overcame on a day. From these logbooks they draw sketches of their routes – first map that looked very abstract. This was often done while being at a night camp. 

Sketch of Junkers routes in the Bahr el Ghasal region

The representation of the travel though an abstract space contradicts with what the travelers produced as an image in their travel accounts, where Africa still was inhabited by all sorts of monsters, dangers and exotic creatures.

Scenes from Stanleys books about his travels through Africa