Exploring Africa An Exhibit of Maps and Travel Narratives originally displayed February-April 1997
Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina based on an exhibit by Patrick Scott
hypertext by Jason A. Pierce Wilhelm Blaeu's 1617 map of Africa This exhibit puts on display one of the hidden resources of Thomas Cooper Library's Special Collections, a selection from the many books of travel and exploration purchased for the original South Carolina College Library in the early and middle nineteenth century. The exhibition illustrates most of the major phases in the European exploration of Africa, from the late fifteenth century to the late nineteenth century. The exhibition begins with a series of very beautiful Renaissance maps, showing the tracing of the African coastline in the late fifteenth century, by Portuguese seamen, and with the widely-translated early account of West Africa by the Arab scholar Leo Africanus. Included here are the magnificent facsimile of a fifteenth-century manuscript Ptolemy, purchased in 1983 from the John Shaw Billings Endowment, and Wilhelm Blaeu's famous map of Africa (1617). Also from the Renaissance is another Dutch engraver Theodor de Bry's 1598 map from his famous Voyages, kindly loaned for this exhibit by James P. Barrow, '62. But the heart of the exhibit lies with the many early editions of the great names in the European exploration of the African interiorJames Bruce, Mungo Park, Burckhardt, Clapperton, Laing, Caillie, Lander, and others. With many different motivationsadventure, fame, scientific curiosity, the hope of new wealth or trading opportunities, missionary ardor and anti-slavery zealthe European explorers of Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth century nonetheless form an extraordinary succession of individual bravery and visionary commitment. Many of the books and maps in which they recorded their quest remain both essential historical sources for African history and very beautiful examples of contemporary book production and engraving. Some items, alas, after long years originally on the open shelves of a college library, have been damaged or inappropriately repaired and now need professional conservation, but many are, at least internally, still pristine. | |
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