'Atlas: a world of maps in the British Library' is a different sort of atlas to, say, the Times world atlas or the AA motoring atlas, because you would never use it to find your way from A to B or peruse potential venues for your next holiday.

This is largely because the maps in it are mostly pretty old and do not all conform to our modern idea of accuracy.

The most common question people ask me about an old map is “is it accurate?” On such occasions I would like to be able to sound one of those alarms like in the BBC quiz show QI. But to be polite I tend to answer that “it is as accurate as it was possible to be” or “it is accurate for its time.”

Detail of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea from a sea chart of 1339.

Angelino Dulcert (atrib.), [A portolan chart of the Mediterranean Sea (detail)], c. 1339. Add.MS 25691. 

Accuracy is relative and incredibly subjective. For example, 14^th century 'portolan' sea charts look freakishly accurate because although they are really old we can recognise familiar coastlines in them. Yet if we look more closely, we see that each cape, bay and inlet is exaggerated and distorted in size because – guess what? – the map had to be legible for its user.

The Trossachs, from William Roy's map of Scotland of between 1747 and 1755,

William Roy, [A map showing the Trossachs, part of the fair copy of the military survey of Scotland], 1747-55. Maps CC.5.a.441., sheet 15 (part).

William Roy’s map of Scotland of 1747-55 looks very accurate, and indeed is regarded by some as one of the first modern maps and a precursor to the Ordnance Survey, but it hasn’t been geodetically measured, and the sweeping hill forms sit more in the realms of landscape art.

A map showing the position of the Indian tribes to the north-west of South Carolina from around 1719.

Anon. [Map showing the position of the Indian tribes to the north-west of South Carolina, copied from a painting on deer-skin by an Indian chief, and presented to Sir Francis Nicholson], c. 1719.  Add. MS 4723.

The 1719 Native American map of Carolina is woefully inaccurate by these standards, but more accurate than anything else in its description of the complex interrelations between tribes (shown as circles) and European colonial powers (squares).

Few maps produced before the 19^th century will pass muster if judged by contemporary standards of mathematical accuracy. But if we judge old maps by contemporary standards we can miss the genuinely insightful perspectives they provide on the periods and people they concerned.

They can also help to shine a light back onto ourselves. For who would have thought that a modern and ‘accurate’ map such as a motoring atlas would exaggerate and distort features such as roads in order for users to read them more clearly?

'Atlas: a world of maps from the British Library' is out now.

Tom Harper

Believe it or not, the BL has never published an atlas before. It has published many other types of book, from exhibition catalogues to crime classics, but until today, no bound book of maps called 'atlas'.

There are a number of reasons why not, the principal one being that the British Library isn’t in the habit of making maps. It is, however, very much in the business of collecting maps, and over the past two and a half centuries it has collected rather a lot of them – 4 million to be moderately precise.

The book cover of 'Atlas: a world of maps from the British Library'.

Published today, Atlas: a world of maps from the British Library is a celebration of some of the oldest, prettiest, most significant, unusual, delightful, confusing and compelling maps from the 13^th to the 21^st centuries from the vaults of the British Library.

It has been arranged as an atlas, with world maps at the beginning, followed in alphabetical order by maps of the continents and selected regions, and ending with maps of the oceans, the cosmos and imaginary places.

Cornelis Anthoonisz's map of Amsterdam from 1544.

Cornelis Anthoniszoon, De vermaerde de Koopstadt van Amstelredam [Amsterdam, 1544]. BL Maps STA.29.

It is in many ways the definitive ‘historical’ atlas, because not only do the maps show the world of the past, but they show it in the language of the time. For example, where else can you see the grandeur of golden age Amsterdam through the eyes of one of its residents? How fitting to see an early 1970s map of the far side of the moon infused with the psychedelic technicolour of the time?

Desiree E. Stuart-Alexander's 'Geological Atlas of the Moon: Central Far Side of the Moon' from 1978,

Desiree E. Stuart-Alexander, Geological Atlas of the Moon: Central Far Side of the Moon. United States Geological Survey, 1978. BL Maps Y.81.

This atlas may not help you to get from A to B or to decide where to next go on holiday, but if you’re looking to travel back in time, here’s your chance.

The Maps & Views blog is written mostly by people who spend their time looking at maps. In this guest blog, by Kenneth Field, we are treated to some insights from somebody who is actually involved in making them. Ken writes:

'Making maps has progressed from filling empty spaces with mythical creatures to trying to unravel the complexities in data to present meaning with clarity. One way of demystifying cartography is to promote the idea that thinking is key. Approaching mapmaking by thinking about what you want your map to say, how to build something meaningful from visual ingredients, how people read the graphical signage, and what emotions you want to spark is the magic needed to make a better map.

Data and the tools to make maps have become ubiquitous and so many more people are making maps. Technology has made the mapmaking task fast, simple, and reproducible but thinking what the technology is actually doing helps you make a better map. It is almost incomprehensible to understand how maps were made even 20 years ago. Automation has played a huge role in design and production but in some ways it may have led to a lack of appreciation of what goes into making a good map. Making a map fast does not necessarily lead to a great map.

Cartography doesn’t need to be hard and whilst there’s plenty of what might be called rules, these are just guidelines developed from decades of practice and people working out what works and why. Maps should be objective and have scientific rigor but there’s plenty of scope for creativity. Any design-led field sits at the intersection of science and art, and learning some of the rules means you’ll know when best to break them.

My current book, called Cartography.  (as in, cartography, full stop), is a product of my thoughts and experience on the world of cartography. It encapsulates the wisdom of many people who have taught me and from whom I have learnt. What I have tried to achieve is a translation of cartography from a specialist domain to one that builds a bridge between cartographer and mapmaker. I’ve tried to make the subject practical and valuable, not only as a reminder to professionals but as a companion to all who need to make a great map. We’ve all been beginners somewhere along our journey, and we’re all amateurs at some things. As a cartographic professional, I hope this supports people in their own cartographic journeys.

Material is organized alphabetically, providing an accessible, encyclopedic approach rather than presented linearly as a traditional text book. The book, then, is a collection of not just my ideas but that of many, many experts in the wider cartographic, and allied fields. To that end, I believe it brings together the very brightest talent currently involved in both academic and commercial cartography to help me bring this book to life.'

Kenneth Field

 After a long journey and much hard work from a lot of very dedicated people, it is time to get excited about medieval maps again! The Virtual Mappa Project has been officially released as an open access publication, with an incredible collection of digitised medieval world maps from the British Library and beyond, all online, annotated and waiting to be explored.

Back in 2013 I was hard at work in the BL Maps department, tasked with marking up some marvellous medieval mappaemundi. At that time I documented my work and the project’s progress in a few blogs posts, including this overview available here. To recap, the British Library has lent its medieval manuscripts, imaging studios and hive-mind of expertise to the DM project, to help create a corpus of digital editions of medieval world maps in a visually navigable, text-searchable, translated format, that makes their intricacies much more accessible to modern minds. A full history of DM and everyone involved can be found here and it is fair to say there have been some technical hiccups along the way (hence the slight delay in publication), but we are now ready to unveil the finished product and I must admit I'm very excited.

DM workspace showing two British Library mappaemundi more recently added to the project, and introductory information for the Virtual Mappa project as a whole.

The selection of mappaemundi that we annotated come from the British Library's extensive collections and a handful of external sources, namely Hereford Cathedral, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, and St John's College Oxford. Six of the maps are from the BL itself, including the tiny Psalter Map and the List Map on its reverse page. Also included are the unique Royal Higden map (you can read much more about it here) and a smaller example of a Polychronicon map on its reverse. The starkly diagrammatic Peterborough Computus Map, labelled in both Greek and Latin, offers a different view of medieval cartographic culture and cosmology. And finally, one of the oldest manuscript maps in existence, the Anglo-Saxon World Map or Cotton Map, has been beautifully rendered and annotated; it is a key reason why this project came about in the first place.  

DM workspace showing different depictions of Paradise on six maps from the British Library and beyond.

Of the maps from outside the British Library, from Oxford we have the Thorney Computus Map, from Cambridge another 'Higden Map' in a very stylised format, plus the fascinating Sawley Map and an unfinished version of a computus map from Worcester. The manuscripts are available to view digitally at Parker Web 2.0, but if you want your Latin text transcribed and translated, I would take a look at our online editions instead! Last, but by no means least, we have the world's finest surviving example of an ornate medieval mappamundi, the Hereford Map. Measuring five feet high, this amazing map is on display at Hereford Cathedral, and I am overjoyed that it has been included in the Virtual Mappa Project, as it is mostly to blame for me getting involved in making digital versions of medieval mappaemundi! 

So those are the maps, and they are ready to explore. Just open the webpage, (use Chrome or Firefox browser for best performance) click on Virtual Mappa Project from the dropdown menu at the top right and load the map(s) you are interested in. If you want to make the most of your experience, consult the digitalmappa.org help guide. The flexible layout means you can open one image at a time or have a few onscreen side-by-side for comparison, and you can use your mouse or trackpad to navigate the map image, as you would with any online map.  Annotations, whether text or image, will have a blue outline, and if you hover your cursor over this outline a pop-up box will appear with more information – e.g. a translation of the text, or a description of the image – which can be opened in a new window in the workspace. There are in-depth guides embedded in the resource, plus specific notes and further reading for each map, so all the information you might need is built in.  

Virtual Mappa workspace with three depictions of wind roundels from the northern edges of maps.

If you are reading this blog then there is every chance that you will be interested in exploring some medieval maps yourself, so go ahead and take a look around! But who else could make use of this resource? It really is groundbreaking in presenting such visually complex medieval materials in such an accessible format. For this reason, we think it would make a great teaching tool, and I plan to integrate it into my own undergraduate teaching. For students who are new to studying medieval history, it gives a real sense of the richness of the artistic output of this era, highlighting key medieval cartographic principles like the all-encompassing Christian cosmology, and is maybe a bit more interesting to look at than texts in translation. It could be used by postgraduate students practising their palaeography skills, or anyone looking to incorporate more medieval visual materials into their work. The maps themselves contain so much interlinked information that their research applications for the era are almost endless. And if you are a scholar working on a particular medieval map, the project also invites you to become a Virtual Mappa editor and contributor – this is a collaborative, open access scholarly publication hosted by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, and every editor receives a byline and authorial credit for their published scholarly work. For more information see the "Becoming a Contributor" guide inside Virtual Mappa for more information.     

A section of the Hereford Map showing all sorts of strange creatures and monstrous men

On a personal note, I'm particularly interested in the 'monstrous men' who inhabit the edges of these maps, and so I'll be incorporating this resource into my PhD research. The content is text-searchable, making it straightforward to check if a map is home to a particular creature, and I can easily gather high-resolution screenshots to use in my research. In general, Virtual Mappa should open up these maps to a much greater number of interested readers, thus stimulating contributions to our collective knowledge of these magnificent materials. Maybe you aren't a medievalist or a map specialist, but if you like Harry Potter or other books and films inspired by the magic of the Middle Ages you should seek out some of the fascinating mythical creatures found lurking in Virtual Mappa, especially on the Hereford Map, which also has its own stand alone version to explore...
 

The Bonnacon, from the Hereford map - a very strange beast with an effective method of self-defence.

While you are checking out Virtual Mappa, there are two other projects at the Schoenberg Institute available to view, which showcase how DM software can be used for any type of digital object. They also make good use of another digitised BL manuscript, Cotton Vespasian D xv. We can see from the other projects – the Four Anglo-Carolingian Mini-Editions, and the Anglo-Latin and Old English Belltokens – how the DM  tools can be applied to other types of medieval manuscript materials, and maybe you can picture how the software could be used for sources that you work with. I have discussed the annotation tools before here, and it is now possible for users to set up their own DM servers and host their own projects. There is even a public sandbox available to try out ideas for projects, and the future DM2.0 release will make new project creations simpler and swifter. To find out more about the DM resource in general, just go to digitalmappa.org.
   

Old English and Anglo-Latin Belltokens Project: Latin and Old English manuscript images, with transcriptions and translations

Myself and everyone in the British Library maps team are so happy that the Virtual Mappa Project is ready for you to explore. There is much more to come from DM in future, and I can't wait to see how other projects might use the tools that DM have developed. I'm looking forward to a whole new generation of medieval map experts emerging on the back of Virtual Mappa. Thanks to everyone involved in producing these fantastic resources, and I hope you enjoy exploring the medieval world through our online mappaemundi.

 

        Cat Crossley 

 

All images in this blog post are taken directly from Virtual Mappa (eds. Martin Foys, Heather Wacha et al. Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies, 2018: http://sims.digitalmappa.org/workspace/#965fe731) except Old English and Anglo-Latin Belltokens image, taken from http://sims.digitalmappa.org/workspace/#6kgzvltt 

In my last blog I noted how John Rocque’s 1750 map of Rome could be considered both a personal memento for the grand tourist who likely commissioned it – Sir Bourchier Wrey – as well as a useful map for travellers.

John Rocque, A Plan of Rome, (London, 1750), British Library Maps K.Top.81.22.

My post today will look at events surrounding the production of Rocque’s map of Rome. The ensuing story reveals this London mapmaker to be a rather ruthless opportunist…

 

Giambattista Nolli, detail of Nuova Pianta di Roma , (Rome, 1748), British Library Maps K.Top.81.21.8.TAB.

In 1748 the Italian cartographer Giambattista Nolli produced a landmark map of Rome. It came in two sizes: a monumental twelve-sheet map entitled Nuova Pianta di Roma, and a reduced single-sheet version called La Topografia di Roma. Scholars sometimes refer to them respectively as the Pianta grande and the Pianta piccola for short, and copies of both can be found in King George III’s Topographical Collection.

Giambattista Nolli, La Topografia di Roma , (Rome, 1748), British Library Maps K.Top.81.21.a.

The incredible detail of Nolli’s Pianta grande ensured that it was still being used in some form for over 200 hundred years.[1] The story abroad, however, was another matter entirely: in terms of sales, it was a bit of a flop. Among the reasons for this disappointing turnover, at least in Britain, was the quick-witted John Rocque.[2]

Giambattista Nolli, detail of Nuova Pianta di Roma , (Rome, 1748), British Library Maps K.Top.81.21.8.TAB.

As was common in the eighteenth century, Nolli and his associate Girolamo Belloni attempted to raise funds for the project by seeking advance subscribers.[3] Nolli handled the domestic sales (i.e. the Papal States), while Belloni was responsible for international sales. To this end Belloni travelled across Europe from 1747 to 1756.

Before publication Belloni procured a meagre 59 subscribers abroad. Though we don’t know exactly how many of those came from London, the figure for Paris, by comparison, was 6. By the end of 1756 Belloni recorded that he had sold a grand total of 459 copies abroad. This was a rather disappointing return for a project so long and so dear in the making.

Despite this, the popularity of the map in London was high, relative to other European cities, perhaps reflecting Rome’s status in Britain as the Grand Tour capital. It might have sold even better still, were it not for John Rocque.

Among the first shipments sent out around May 1748 was a batch of 48 maps (or 56, according to a second note) en route to London that were lost in a shipwreck.

Belloni, it seems, did not react quickly enough to this setback, but Rocque did. For in 1750, after a fairly brisk turnaround, Rocque published his own map of Rome, a compilation of the Pianta grande and the Pianta piccola.[4] Even though Rocque did credit Nolli in his title, this was bare-faced plagiarism designed to capitalise on Belloni’s slowness in supplying the London map market.

Seeing an example of Nolli’s map in 1750, the artist Canaletto, in London at that time, remarked: “many gentlemen have already been provided with it by another hand”.[5] Though it is far from explicit, Canaletto was surely referring to Rocque, since he was the only mapmaker who had made a copy by this date.

Thus with a keen eye for an opportunity, John Rocque stole a march on his rivals: what was Nolli and Belloni’s loss was his gain. The eighteenth-century map market could be a ruthless place.

 

[1] In fact, it formed the base of plans of the city by the Italian government until the 1970s, see Ceen, Allan, ‘Nuova Pianta di Roma Data in Luce da Giambattista Nolli l’Anno MDCCXLVIII’, http://nolli.uoregon.edu/nuovaPianta.html.

[2] The details of the history of Nolli’s map come from Bevilacqua, Mario, Roma nel Secolo dei Lumi: Architettura, erudizione, scienza nella Pianta di G.B. Nolli «celebre geometra», (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1998), especially pp. 49-52.

[3] For more information about the subscription model, see Pedley, Mary Sponberg, The commerce of cartography: making and marketing maps in eighteenth-century France and England, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 84-90.

[4] There is some uncertainty among map historians concerning how long it took to prepare copperplates for printing, with estimates ranging from a few days to many months. Contrast, for example, Pedley (2005), pp. 53-56, and Carhart, George, ‘How Long Did It Take to Engrave an Early Modern Map? A Consideration of Craft Practices’, in Imago Mundi, Vol. 56, No. 2 (2004), pp. 194-197.

[5] “essendo già stati provisti molti Signori Personaggi da altro mano”. My translation; see Bevilacqua (2005), p. 52.

 
The British Library, with generous funding from the Indigo Trust, has recently conserved, catalogued, digitised and made freely available online a further 1,100 images of maps and associated documents relating to East Africa.  The material represents part of the War Office (now Ministry of Defence) Archive of cartographic and topographic material produced in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries to support British interests overseas.

Figure 1. The Nyika Plateau, British Central Africa (present-day Malawi). (Extract from WOMAT/AFR/BCA/23/1)

Figure 1 is typical of such mapping. A carefully prepared manuscript in coloured ink and watercolour on tracing linen, it also represented an interesting challenge for the Library’s cataloguers.  Despite the lack of title, Lake Nyasa quickly establishes the location as north-eastern Malawi (or British Central Africa Protectorate as it was in 1904, the date revealed by a marginal note).  But to understand the map fully, and you certainly need to do that to catalogue it, it is also necessary to determine why it was produced.  Frustratingly, this attractive little map offers few clues.  The Nyika Plateau, a large area of rolling rough grassland, is portrayed in some detail together with an expedition route.  The distances involved are large – the entire march would have been over 250 kilometres, some of it at altitudes of 2,000 metres.  Was it perhaps an exploratory trek into an area hitherto unknown to ascertain the potential for British colonial control?  It is here that the research must start, and an article in a forty-year-old journal (Boeder, 1979) provided the answer.

Figure 2. Enlargement of Figure 1, showing the village of Ekwendeni, the seat of the indaba between Alfred Sharpe’s administration and the Ngoni tribal chiefs. (Extract from WOMAT/AFR/BCA/23/1)

Figure 2 is an enlargement of the southern portion of the map, and in particular the seemingly anonymous village of Ekwendeni. It was here in September 1904 that Protectorate Commissioner Alfred Sharpe (1853-1935) signed a major administration agreement with the leaders of the powerful Ngoni tribe.  The Ngoni had settled the plateau and its surrounding area in the 1850s and soon assumed control over the local Tumbuka and Tonga tribes.

Sharpe was a character of boundless energy. Born in Lancaster and educated at Haileybury College, he embarked on a career in law, training with a firm of solicitors and being admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-three.  But Sharpe was soon restless.  In 1883, in a joint undertaking with a cousin, he established a sugar plantation in Fiji, but a beet sugar crisis the following year put paid to the endeavour.  Sharpe’s next venture was to central Africa where he would spend much of the rest of his life.

Initially engaged as a professional elephant hunter and ivory trader, Sharpe met Harry Johnston, Protectorate Consul-General and later Commissioner. Johnston, recognising the usefulness of Sharpe’s legal training, quickly employed him to make treaties with tribal chiefs.  Sharpe soon established himself as a talented diplomat, and was appointed as Johnston’s deputy in 1893.  Three years later Johnston, by now Sir Harry, vacated the post with Sharpe eventually succeeding him as Commissioner.

Part of Sharpe’s remit was to continue Johnston’s establishment of administrative control within the Protectorate. This included the imposition of Hut Tax, an unpopular household levy that became even more so in a polygamous society where each wife had her own hut that attracted an additional charge.  Sharpe trod carefully, purposely deferring until 1904 when the Ngoni were at their most vulnerable.  The death of Chief M’mbelwa had created a power vacuum, order was deteriorating and a local famine had triggered overgrazing, out-migration and tensions with neighbouring tribes. In late August Sharpe’s party took a steamer from Fort Johnston (now Mangochi) up the west coast of Lake Nyasa to Florence Bay.  From here they climbed 800 metres to the Livingstonia Mission on the edge of the Nyika Plateau.  An indaba (gathering) was arranged with the Ngoni at Ekwendeni, to which Sharpe and his party walked the 160 kilometres across the plateau.

Thousands of Ngoni had gathered at Ekwendeni, and although Sharpe had brought soldiers it was his intention not to use them; indeed, they wandered unarmed among the thankfully peaceful crowds. Sharpe met the Ngoni chiefs on 2 September, with a mission teacher acting as interpreter.  Sharpe explained that the tribe’s expansion into neighbouring lands had contravened an earlier pact with Johnston, the agreed penalty of which was subjugation to colonial control.  The chiefs conceded this, and so negotiations began on the terms of the administration. While Hut Tax would have to be paid, the Ngoni still drove a hard bargain, with Sharpe agreeing that the tribal constitution could remain, the local police could be staffed by Ngoni tribesmen and that taxation could be deferred until 1906.  The chiefs would assist in the collection of the taxes in return for stipends of up to £30 (about £2,500 today).  The deal was signed, sealed and delivered by sunset.

That the agreement was signed so quickly may have been down to both side’s preparedness to negotiate. Johnston had been a tougher type than Sharpe, frequently resorting to military force and offering little by the way of indigenous self-governance, and understandably affairs had often been strained.

Sharpe, by now Sir Alfred and Governor of the newly-created Nyasaland, retired in 1910 yet the relatively good relationship between the administration and the local population continued. By 1914, however, life for the Ngoni had become more difficult.  Overgrazing and poor soils had once again led to famine and out-migration, and in turn the Hut Tax became unaffordable for many.  Ngoni chiefs clashed with new governor Sir George Smith over a refusal to reduce taxes for the most disadvantaged.  Relations reached a low point with the onset of the First World War and calls for tribal enlistment and the requisition of food from areas already suffering shortages.  Smith tightened his control, and the powers of the tribal chiefs diminished.

While this is a fascinating story, it is nevertheless one that the map alone cannot tell. The map itself is neatly compiled – certainly the hand of a trained draughtsman, probably a non-commissioned army officer or mid-ranking government official.  However, there is also a second, larger and more cursive script demarking the expedition route (Figure 2).  Somewhat blithe alongside the draughtsman’s more painstaking work, this addition in generously laden, broad-nibbed fountain pen is very much the hallmark of a senior officer.  It was a long shot but worth a punt, and ten minutes and an internet search later a collection of Sharpe’s personal correspondence was unearthed.  The handwriting appeared identical but, as tempting as it is, cataloguers must work in certainties, and the creation of a Library record for Sharpe as ‘cartographer’ will have to wait for another time.

The Ekwendeni map is typical of many in the War Office Archive, portraying the challenges encountered by indigenous populations in the face of colonialism. The archive can be accessed from the Library’s War Office Archive webpage or downloaded from Wikimedia Commons; there is also a Google Map index marking the central point of each map sheet and providing links to the catalogue records and images.

Nick Krebs

Map Cataloguer, War Office Archive

 

Further reading

R.B. Boeder, ‘Sir Alfred Sharpe and the Imposition of Colonial Rule on the Northern Ngoni’, The Society of Malawi Journal, 32 (1979), 23-30.

Alfred Sharpe, The Backbone of Africa (London: Witherby, 1921).

We are pleased to introduce this guest blog post by Dr Dorothea McEwan.

Ethiopia is the product of a long historical process, from the Aksumite empire 2000 years ago, then the introduction of Christianity in the 4^th century, the political expansion of various ethnicities, the centuries-long artistic development of rock churches, followed by Portuguese military and Roman Catholic religious intervention in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and finally the unification of the country under emperor Tewodros ll (reigned 1855-1868).

Europeans have travelled in the country and written about their experiences adding to this geographical knowledge by drawing maps of the  routes of their travels, like the Scotsman James Bruce, who published his account in 1790. In 19^th century Europe the growing importance of geography as an academic discipline led many travellers to create maps, which they sometimes complemented with potted histories of the lands, the turbulent political times and customs and mores of the populations.

Map of Axum und Adoa. Add ms 28506, f. 17. This is the Aksum and Adwa Region in Tigre, concentrating particularly on how far the clay plateau extends and on its configuration (shown here in red which is also more or less its natural colour ‘).

One such traveller was the German botanist Georg Wilhelm Schimper (1804-1878), who lived and worked in Ethiopia from 1838 to his death in 1878. He witnessed upheavals and wars, the coronation of Emperor Tewodros II in 1855, married and had children with Ethiopian women, but most notably, he criss-crossed the country to research the flora of the country. He sent the dried botanical specimens back to Germany and France and made a living out of it courtesy of travel associations like the Esslingen Reiseverein which advanced money to Schimper and recouped it from the sale of his dried plant specimens to European herbaria.

When this income dried up, he was lucky enough to be appointed as regional administrator in Enticho, Northern Ethiopia, until 1855. In the 1860s he was engaged in something totally new: because of his detailed knowledge of the plant life in various regions, dependent as this was on the differing soils and rock formations, he proceeded to integrate geological information onto maps that he drew himself, accompanying the maps with plentiful and detailed botanical, geological and geographical observations.

He produced four manuscript maps, held by the British Library at Add. MS 28506. The maps and accompanying commentaries by Andreas Gestrich, Dorothea McEwan and Stefan Hanß have been published by the German Historical Institute London, and are online here. The database presents 221 folios of the original German pages, transliterated in modern German and translated into English, with a fully annotated bibliography and biography of Schimper.  

(BL Add ms 28505, f. 86r) This folio is wonderfully illustrated with little sketches of parasols and rain ‘coats’ worn by local people together with the following explanation:

'The Scirpus and Juncus, known as Saddi, usually growing on the banks of brooks or otherwise in quite marshy places, and some slender Cyperus, called Gadima, which grow there too, are used for parasols and shepherds’ cloaks. The parasols are made from the stems of these plants in the following manner: A few inches below the thicker end of a normally three to three and a half ft. long stick or reed, four thin rods are first attached as spokes. Their thickness and length are more or less the same as the whalebone of the parasols of European ladies. Then the stems of these plants are used to weave a small flat disk around these four spokes lying right up against the stick. Next a number of other spokes are woven into this disk, which, in the gaps, gets double stem reinforcement. Now the whole framework is tightly interwoven, snake-like with these stalks.

These stalks are first stripped of their green outer skin, making the whole thing look like a white shade. These parasols are called Zelal here, meaning ‘shade’, and are very much in use by women as well as by men. As these parasols cannot be folded they have to be carried around even when it is cloudy or in the evening at dusk. These parasols are the same size as the parasols carried by European ladies, but they are not slightly curved. They have an almost completely flat, horizontal parasol top.

Typha, and the larger Cyperus (Doguale) are also used, just like the Scirpus and Juncus stalks, for this purpose and for making shepherds’ cloaks. It would be impossible to find a better or simpler coat to protect you from the rain. The green outer casing of the stalks of these reed-like plants are left on, and then they are woven into a shape like the guardhouses of European soldiers on individual sentry duty. This kind of reed coat, like a roof, reaching to the knees and repelling rain quite well, is called Gassa, and is only used by shepherd boys. In the cold highlands of Semien, shepherds often wear sheepskins, like other adult country folk.'  

You can access George Wilhelm Schimper in Abyssinia: Observations on Tigre, go to  http://exist.ghil.ac.uk:8079/Schimper/biography.html

Dorothea McEwan

International Women's Day 2018 provides the opportunity to celebrate the life and achievements of Helen Wallis OBE (1924-1995) head of the British Museum and later British Library's map collections between 1967-1986, and to promote a research fund set up in her memory. 

Helen Wallis was one of the leading figures in map librarianship who pioneered the study of cartography. She was the first woman to hold the position of Map Librarian, following on from her predecessor R.A. Skelton (1906-1970) in 1967. Over 19 years she made the British Library the centre for map studies through research, publications and exhibitions including the Cook bicentenary exhibition of 1968, the American War of Independence exhibition of 1975 and the Francis Drake exhibition of 1977.

Wallis was a geographically-trained historian, a gifted and enthusiastic communicator, and a prominent member of professional and academic organisations. Among her wide research interests were historical globes. She was the first to unearth the significance of the earliest English-produced globes the (Molyneux Globes of 1590), and was the first to research the Jesuit-produced 'Chinese' globe of 1623 which was donated to the nation during her tenure. Once, when transporting the globe on an aeroplane to Berlin where it was to be exhibited, she famously had a seat reservation made out to it in the name of 'Mr Globe'.

Mr Globe

In honour of the memory of Helen Wallis, an annual award of £300 is available to a scholar  from any field, whose work will help promote the use of the British Library's cartographic collections in historical investigation. The award also offers the convenient working environment of the British Library with extended privileges. The fellowship may be held as a full or part-time appointment, but would normally be for one or two periods totalling a minimum of 6 months with the maximum period being one calendar year.

To apply please send a letter of application, indicating the period you intend to be in London and outlining your proposed research project, together with a full curriculum vitae and the names of three referees to [email protected] or by post to The British Library, Map Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK. The closing date for each annual award is May 1st. For further information on the award please contact [email protected]

Tom Harper