Following a previous blog post concerning the so-called (at least in the 1829 catalogue) “Map of the Rivers in Germany” by Carl Heinrich von der Osten, the King’s Topographical Collection cataloguing project continues to “go with the flow” by examining subsequent river maps, all from the same volume (88) within the K.Top, with some additional facts and discoveries to report.

An example of one of the K.Top guard volumes with its distinctive green spine. The insignium of George III is shown at the top of the spine and the volume number “CXXIV” (74) and shelfmark numbers within (1-51, in this instance) are also given.

Many of the maps and views within the collection are housed within these guard volumes (illustrated above) which are numbered 1 to 124, but comprise some 246 in total because they are presented in multiple parts. Thus Volume 88 has three parts: shelfmarks 1-25 in the first, 26-33 in the second and 34-67 in the third. The physical bindings were created by the British Museum during the 1950s and 1960s, but the volumes follow the more historic organisation of the collection whereby the content is presented in a coherent geographical order and with shelfmarks in sequence. Volume 88 (1-25) contains maps of the rivers of Germany. The volume opens with general maps of the rivers, then presents individual rivers including the Rhine and the Danube, amongst others.

Maps K.Top.88.13. is a map of the River Rhine and environs, oriented with north to the right of the map. It is a copper engraving, printed on three sheets, joined. The map is based on the work of Caspar Vopel in 1555 and illustrates the importance, both strategically and with trade in mind, of the Rhine and its environs.

Theodore de Bry, [Map of the River Rhine], [Frankfurt: 1594], Maps K.Top.88.13. (detail of Cologne and environs)

The map bears a printed message (perhaps the title, in lieu of any other) within a decorative cartouche at upper right that reads, “Benevole lector, haec tabula eo praecipae fine facta est, ut tum Rheni amaenitas tu urbes ad eu sitae oculis spectatiu subijciantur. Itaquae si quid in dimensionibus erratu est, excusatis, quod urbes aliqua magnitudine fuerut delineandae ut ad viuum experimeretur”.

Theodore de Bry, [Map of the River Rhine], [Frankfurt: 1594], Maps K.Top.88.13. (detail of title)

The K.Top example of the map is a scarce edition. In fact, although it is comparable with map number 79/8.5 listed in Robert W. Karrow’s Mapmakers of the sixteenth century and their maps, it is not an exact match and only one other seemingly direct comparison has been located thus far – an example sold by Sotheby's in London at their Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History sale, 15 November 2011, lot 46.

Titled (and not incorrectly) "The Course of the Rhine from its source to its Mouth, by T. d. Bry. Three small sheets" in the British Museum’ s Catalogue of Maps, Prints, Drawings, etc., forming the geographical and topographical collection attached to the Library of his late Majesty King George the third, etc. (London: 1829) this title had become the rather more misleading "(Rheni tricornis et Widi nova et germana descriptio ... Description nouvelle et vraye du Rhin et de ses trois embouchures avecque les fleuves ... Dess berühmten und herzlichen Flusses eigentliche und warhafftige Beschreibung.) Auctore T. d. Bry” by the time the map reached the British Library’s online catalogue. This online title more accurately relates to Maps *27060.(15.) – a separate and later edition of the map with additional letterpress text and with the name "Overadt" added to the title cartouche. Listing both maps together, despite their different dates of publication, on one catalogue record and with just one (of two) titles can cause confusion. The maps, published in disparate years with different persons associated, now have separate catalogue records as a direct result of the K.Top cataloguing project.

Kate Marshall

Most of today’s international boundaries within Africa derive from the Berlin Conference of 1884-5, when the colonial powers divided the region between themselves in order to provide a framework for their own political administrations and for the regulation of trade. Many boundaries were drawn through regions where the detailed geography was unknown, explaining why around thirty per cent of the boundaries in Africa are straight lines. The artificial way in which they were allocated has been criticised for creating arbitrary divisions between communities on the ground, or for preventing the free movement of indigenous nomadic groups, but most of the boundaries have come to be recognised by the African community and persist to this day.

In the years following their initial allocation, a number of the boundaries were surveyed and demarcated on the ground by boundary commissions sent from Europe. While the boundary lines were often finessed to accommodate local geographical features, the locations of population groups were rarely taken into account, though this was not unknown. Among the material held in the War Office Archive is a file which documents a British agreement to hand over territory in order to respect the wishes of the local population.

At the Berlin Conference the region now occupied by Rwanda and Burundi was incorporated into German East Africa and became a single province in the north-west of the colony. After the First World War it was handed to Belgium as a League of Nations mandate, while the rest of German East Africa became a British mandate re-named Tanganyika. The newly-created boundary between the British and Belgian territories was surveyed by the ‘Anglo-Belgian Boundary Commission (Ruanda-Urundi) 1922-1924’, which created field sheets, fair drawings and a sheet index, all now preserved in the archive at reference BL Maps WOOS/4.

Detail of WOOS/4/1/3

Detail of WOOS/4/1/7

The field sheets record regions of mountain, swamp and thick forest, and are in a good state of preservation considering the conditions in which they were made. Some of the ink drawing is highly skilled, with half-erased pencil workings still visible.

The commission started survey work in the north, on the tripoint with Uganda and moved southwards as far as Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika. The sheet index gives an overview of the serpentine route they followed, which is marked in green.

WOOS/4/4

The agreed boundary followed the traditional tribal boundaries of the kingdoms of Ruanda and Urundi that had been incorporated into the former German province. However, in the northern portion the British had negotiated a shift of the line westwards to accommodate the planned construction of a British railway connecting Tanganyika to Uganda - marked ‘POSSIBLE […RAILWAY ROUTE]’.

Detail of WOOS/4/4

But soon after the boundary commission had passed through the area, Belgian missionaries in Rwanda made a formal protest to the League of Nations at ‘the social, political and economic harm caused by the imposition of this arbitrary boundary’, and proposed moving it back eastward ‘to the “natural frontier” of the Kagera River’. The British government subsequently agreed that the imposition of the boundary had had harmful effects on the resident population, and since by this time an alternative rail route existed between Uganda and Tanganyika they had no objection to the re-location of the boundary. The agreement was made in 1923, and is shown on the index sheet in red hatching labelled ‘Area to be handed over to Belgium’.

Detail of WOOS/4/4

The Times of 21 January 1924 reported that the Belgians ‘expressed their deep gratitude for the spirit of equity and the sincere desire to respond to the wishes of the native population manifested by Great Britain in these negotiations’. But a more recent study has concluded that, ‘far from being a natural cultural divide, the new boundary did still cut across four small culture areas – Ha, Hangaza, Haya and Zinza’.

The Belgians surveyed the new portion of the boundary shortly after the transfer was made, but the precise definition and demarcation of its course through wide papyrus swampland was not finally settled until 1934, when the sale of tin mining concessions in the area made it imperative to establish the boundary once and for all. In the present day it remains unchanged as the boundary between Rwanda and Tanzania.

 

Nicholas Dykes

The British East Africa portion of the War Office Archive is being conserved, catalogued and digitised with generous funding from the Indigo Trust.

Further Reading:

Adekunle Ajala, ‘The Nature of African Boundaries’, Africa Spectrum, vol. 18, no. 2 (1983)

Ian Brownlie, Ian R. Burns, African Boundaries: A Legal and Diplomatic Encyclopaedia (1979)

Ieuan Griffiths, ‘The Scramble for Africa: Inherited Political Boundaries’, The Geographical Journal, vol. 152, no. 2 (Jul., 1986)

United States Bureau of Intelligence and Research, International Boundary Study, no. 69 (May 2, 1966), Rwanda-Tanzania Boundary

H.B. Thomas, ‘The Kagera Triangle and the Kagera Salient’, The Uganda Journal, vol.23, no.1 (March 1959)

The British Library is pleased to have a number of of maps and views currently on display in a special exhibition at the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at Boston Public Library. These maps, which come from the King's Topographical and RUSI collections, were digitised and catalogued thanks to a project involving the Leventhal Map Center and generous private sponsors. The exhibition is entitled 'We Are One: Mapping America’s Road from Revolution to Independence,' and we are delighted to host this guest blog post about the display by Allison Lange. 

In late April 1775, twenty-five-year-old British Lieutenant Richard Williams left Europe for Boston to take part in the American war. The battles of Lexington and Concord earlier that month had prompted British troops to retreat to the city, which was soon surrounded by American soldiers. Williams landed in Boston in June, and—despite the circumstances—he was glad to be there. He declared in his diary, “the Land was a pleasing object after six weeks of absence from it.”

Williams’s duties were tied to the land. As a cartographer and artist, he mapped the area for military and political leaders to study. The British Library’s map collection includes several pieces of his work that offer unique, beautiful views of life during the siege.

The day after his arrival, Williams took stock of Boston. He went to Beacon Hill to view the rebellious colonists surrounding the peninsula. “Boston is large & well built, tho’ not a regular laid out town,” he concluded. Williams thought the area had seen better days “before the present unhappy affairs” when “it was livly [sic] and flurishing [sic].”

[Richard Williams] (active 1750-1776), 'A Plan of Boston and its Environs Shewing the True Situation of His Majesty’s Troops and Also Those of the Rebels, Likewise All the Forts, Redoubts and Entrenchments Erected by Both Armies.' 1775. Manuscript, pen and ink and watercolour. British Library Add.MS. 15535.5. 

Williams used his view from Beacon Hill for his maps and sketches. He likely drew the Plan of Boston and its Environs Shewing the True Situation of His Majesty’s Troops, which is part of the British Library’s map collection, from this spot. The map depicts the positions of the British and American troops in October 1775. Fortifications were colored yellow for the rebels and green for the British. Camps, like the one on the Boston Common, are red.

Richard Williams (active 1750-1776), 'A View of the Country Round Boston, Taken from Beacon Hill…Shewing the Lines, Redoubts, & Different Encampments of the Rebels Also Those of His Majesty’s Troops under the Command of His Excellency Lieut. General Gage, Governor of Massachuset’s Bay.' 1775. Manuscript, ink and watercolour. British Library Maps K.Top 120.38. 

In addition to this map, Williams captured the landscape with watercolors like A View of the Country Round Boston, Taken from Beacon Hill. He sketched Boston’s churches and homes and documented the British camps that had transformed the city into a military base. At the bottom of the scene, Williams included a key to identify fortifications like Castle Williams and the “Redoubts of the Rebels.”

British military and political leaders commissioned maps like these to gain a better sense of the Revolutionary War. Williams drew his Plan of Boston and sent it to London, where it was printed less than two weeks before the British evacuated the city on March 17, 1776. He also sent his watercolor view, one in a series, to London. This piece eventually made its way into the British Library’s King George III’s Topographical Collection.

After evacuating Boston and sailing for Nova Scotia, Williams became ill and abruptly stopped writing in his diary. He returned to England, where he died on April 30, 1776. Although he died young, the unique views he left behind offer valuable insights into life during the siege.

For the first time, the British Library has loaned these items for display in the city that Williams captured on paper. Williams’ work is featured in the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center’s exhibition at the Boston Public Library. The exhibition, We Are One: Mapping America’s Road from Revolution to Independence, uses maps to explore the events that led thirteen colonies to forge a new nation. We Are One demonstrates that maps, from Williams’s plan to early maps of the new nation, were central to the revolutionary process. The exhibition features maps as well as prints, paintings, and objects from the Leventhal Map Center’s own collection and those of twenty partners, including the Library of Congress, William L. Clements Library, and John Carter Brown Library. Explore geo-referenced maps from the exhibition here.

The exhibition will be on display at the Boston Public Library through November 29, 2015. We Are One then travels to Colonial Williamsburg from February 2016 through January 2017 and to the New-York Historical Society from November 2017 through March 2018.

The Leventhal Map Center also hosts the NEH-funded American Revolution Portal database. Researchers can access maps from the American Antiquarian Society, British Library, Library of Congress, and other institutions in one search. Users can download images for research and classroom use.

Access these resources and learn more about We Are One here 

Allison K. Lange, PhD

 

The British Library's Map Library is offering the following three month internship opportunity for a Research Council funded PhD student.

Contribute to a major exhibition launching in November 2016 that will explore key aspects of national and international government policy, boundaries and identities through the 20th Century. You will focus on developing part of the exhibition narrative that discusses the role of maps in geopolitical contexts e.g. boundary mapping used to establish new national borders; the role of mapping in communicating the work and supporting the existence of supranational bodies such as the UN andEEC.

CARTE NO. 3 - SLESVIG / MAP NO. 3 - SCHLESWIG from Conditions de Paix  =  Conditions of Peace [Paris, s.n., 1919]. British Library L.B.31.c.6113. 

One placement is available, open to Economic and Social Research Council students. You can find further details of the scheme, together with application form and guidance notes here. 

This is one of a number of exciting internship opportunities offered by the British Library, and the deadline is fast approaching: 16:00 on the 28th August 2015. Good luck!

The K.Top cataloguing and digitisation project marches ever forward, rather like the Swedish military in this map. The illustration below shows a battle scene, one of several on the map, from the Swedish Intervention during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48). The military are shown south-east of Prague, in the Kingdom of Bohemia.

Carl Heinrich von der Osten, [Map of Germany made after the Swedish Campaign of 1630-48], [about 1650], Maps K.Top.88.1. (detail)

This map’s military and historical significance had, prior to the current cataloguing and digitisation project, been obscured by the possibly perfunctory description in the British Museum’s 1829 catalogue:

Catalogue of Maps, Prints, Drawings, etc., forming the geographical and topographical collection attached to the Library of his late Majesty King George the third, etc., 1829

Now titled in the British Library’s catalogue in accordance with published works regarding the map, particularly Harold Köhlin’s article A map of Germany made after the Swedish Campaign of 1630-48 in Volume 8 of "Imago Mundi" (1951), but also Peter Meurer’s entry for map number 8.12.5.aa in Corpus der älteren Germania-Karten (2001), the new title offers better access to the map itself, while the citations to these reference works act as a platform for further study. Access to the catalogue is freely available through Explore the British Library.

Although the map does indeed show rivers, just as the 1829 catalogue entry suggests, its purpose was celebratory - peace at the end of the Thirty Years’ War – and it was also intended to illustrate and glorify Swedish intervention by marking the locations of important battles. A “thank you” in cartographic form, perhaps. The map was created by Carl Heinrich von der Osten, a German Royal Engineer in Swedish service, who signs the map at lower right, and was drafted by Matthaeus Merian. It is printed on four separate sheets and joined.

Carl Heinrich von der Osten, [Map of Germany made after the Swedish Campaign of 1630-48], [about 1650], Maps K.Top.88.1. (signature detail)

The map is scarce in any state and the K.Top example appears to be the first state of the map, prior to the addition of surrounding letterpress text panels and a grand title - “AMORE PACIS”. Meurer mentions just one example of this first state; in the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (V 5606).

Carl Heinrich von der Osten, [Map of Germany made after the Swedish Campaign of 1630-48], [about 1650], Maps K.Top.88.1.

This map is just one of some approximately 6000 maps and views devoted to Germany and the Low Countries, about 15% of the whole and thus one of the collection’s largest geographical areas. Housed in a guard volume focussing on the rivers in Germany, and indeed the wider Holy Roman Empire, this map by von der Osten was the first of several important discoveries all from this same volume, details of which will follow in subsequent blog posts.

Kate Marshall

The following blog focuses on an atlas of China produced by French Jesuits and now in the Topographical Collection of George III.

 The founding of the Académie des Sciences in Paris in 1666 put France at the forefront of the scientific developments in Europe. The Academy’s efforts resulted in dramatic advances in cartographic and surveying methods, as well as expeditions to remote locations in order to contribute to the accurate depiction of the globe. The French Jesuit mission to China in the 1690s was focused on this very ambition – geographical exploration in order to build a better European understanding of the empire.

 For the Chinese authorities mapping represented a means of control over areas conquered by the Manchu Qing Dynasty. The resulting Kangxi or K'ang-hsi atlas (taking its name from the emperor, who ruled from 1661-1722), was completed from the surveys carried out between 1708 and 1718, chiefly by Dominique Parrenin (1665-1741), Thomas Antoine (1644-1709), Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730), Jean Baptiste Regis (1663-1738) and Pierre Jartoux (1669-1720).

 In 1705 the Jesuits had been given the task of creating a map of Tianjin region, an area of intense flooding, and the region around Beijing in 1707. Satisfactory results of these initial projects piqued the emperor’s interest to see the Great Wall and further areas mapped. This led to the survey of the vast areas of the empire including all the Chinese provinces and parts of Tartary. The Jesuits were not allowed into Tibet, Korea and Eastern Turkistan, and here they used maps constructed by Chinese officials. Tibet was surveyed twice and the additional information collected was used for printing of subsequent editions of the atlas.  
 
                     

The first woodcut edition was printed in 1717, followed by copperplate edition in 1719 and, the second woodcut version in 1721. The King’s Topographical Collection printed copy of the atlas (Maps K.Top.116.15,15a,15b.) is a fine example of the first engraved edition. It comes in the form of three large rolls each measuring around two by three metres. The map covers fifteen Chinese provinces, Korea, Great Tartary and Tibet. The text on the map is in Chinese and Manchu script. Additionally, the manuscript annotations in Italian transcribe names of provinces, cities, rivers and islands. The hand is likely to be that of Father Matteo Ripa, the Italian Jesuit, engraver of the copperplate edition of the map. It was also Ripa who presented the copperplate set of Kangxi atlas to George I, during an audience on 9 September 1724 when he visited London on his way back from China.

This in itself is interesting. Even more interesting is the presence of another map (Maps K.Top.116.18.a-d.2 TAB.), comprising four manuscript rolls and containing the east coast of China, from Hainan to the Russian island of Sakhalin, with the Amur delta. The geographical notes in Italian are in the same hand as the manuscript annotations on the engraved copy of the atlas. Peter Barber suggests the map might have been part of the presentation to the king. Nevertheless, attribution and the exact story of provenance of this map can only be speculative. Sources are inexistent with regards to a manuscript copy of the map being presented by Ripa to George I. Copper plates were part of the presentation set, but  no sign of these plates in the King’s Topographical Collection can be found.

 

The Jesuits’ mapping of China can be viewed as part of a wider pattern of early-modern era monarchs commissioning the mapping of their dominions. This is well represented by Cassini’s work in France and Peter the Great’s mapping of Muscovy. Good mapping was essential for expansion and for the maintenance of political control. In China, this became part of the evolving system described as the Manchu-Chinese diarchy, intended to minimize the dichotomy between the conquering and the conquered.

From a European perspective, the Kangxi atlas formed the basis for building a more accurate understanding of China. However, it took almost another fifteen years, before the monumental work by Jean-Baptiste Du Halde: "Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et physique de l'empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise", was published in 1735, including 41 maps of China by Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville. The wider European reception of this atlas is another story.

Further reading:

Barber, P., “A very curious map of China: The acquisition of Chinese maps by British Library and its predecessors, 1724-2014” (in press)

Bagrow, L. 1964. “The cartography of Asian peoples”. History of cartography, revised and enlarged by R.A. Skelton, 197-211. London: C.A. Watts & Co.

Foss, T. N. 1988. “A Western interpretation of China: Jesuit cartography”. East meets West The Jesuits in China, 1582-1773, 209-251. Chicago: Loyola University Press.

Gray, B. 1960. “Lord Burlington and Father Ripa’s Chinese engravings”, 40-43. The British Museum quarterly, 22 (1/2).

Hsia, F.C. 2009. “Observational fortunes”. Sojourners in a strange land: Jesuits and their scientific missions in late imperial China, 110-128. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Hostetler, L. 2001. “Mapping territory”. Qing colonial enterprise ethnography and cartography in early modern China, 51-80. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Xiaocong, L. 1996. A Descriptive catalogue of pre-1900 Chinese maps seen in Europe, 162-163.

Yee, C.D.K. 1994. “Traditional Chinese cartography and the myth of Westernization”. Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies. Vol. 2.2. of The History of Cartography, eds. J. B. Harley and David Woodward, 170-202. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Within the many treasures of George III’s Topographical Collection, comprising some nearly 40,000 maps and views of all areas of the world, is a curious map of Bohemia by Jodocus Hondius (1594 or 1595-1629) that is amalgamated from two separate copperplates, printed on two separate sheets, and joined here to form one map.

Maps K.Top.89.15. – the join of the two sheets is just visible beneath the mileage scale and extends across the whole width of the map.

The southern portion of the map, beneath the join, expands the geographic detail to include the River Danube with the cities of Linz and Vienna prominent. This “extension” is printed on a separate piece of paper from a separate copperplate and is carefully joined to the “original” map on the sheet above. This additional portion of the map also includes a statement of responsibility on a plinth at lower left, directly beneath the title cartouche on the initial sheet:

Ornatißimo Doctißimq. viro D. Ioanni Wilhemo Bogardo, reipublicae Amstellodamensis Scabino, et vice-Capitaneo, observantiae ergo, D. D. Iudocus Hondius. A.o Domini 1620.

Maps K.Top.89.15. – detail of the title cartouche and statement of responsibility, with the paper join visible between the two.

The map is dedicated to an alderman (?) of Amsterdam “Ioanni Wilhemo Bogardo” (Jan Willem van den Boegaerde?), about whom further information is sought.

However, the printed date of 1620 perhaps offers a contextual reason for the map’s geographic extension into Austria at this time. Peter Barber was quick to point out that the map makes no reference to “Bila Hora” (= “White Mountain”) near Prague, suggesting a date of production in 1620 prior to the important battle there in November. After the defenestration of Prague in 1618 Catholic governors Vilém Slavata of Chlum and Košumberk and Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice, along with their scribe Philip Fabricius, fled Prague for Vienna and the support of their fellow-Catholic, the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, also King of Bohemia (1617–1619 and 1620–1637). The Bohemian Revolt (1618–1620), the Protestant uprising against the rule of the Catholic Habsburg dynasty that had deposed Ferdinand II as King of Bohemia for the Protestant Frederick V (King of Bohemia 1619 – 1620), culminated in 1620 with the Battle of the White Mountain outside Prague when Ferdinand II regained the crown and drove the Protestant “Winter King”, Frederick V (the Elector Palatine), into exile in the Netherlands.

Perhaps the market dictated the need for a map illustrating the ever-changing events in Bohemia by showing routes between Prague and Vienna - this map’s extension to both cities renders it rather topical! One might conclude that the map was published (in Amsterdam) during the short reign of the “Winter King”.

Maps K.Top.89.15. – detail showing Prague and environs.

No other institutional examples of the map with this extension have been located thus far.

Following this map within the collection is another example of the Hondius map of Bohemia without this seemingly unique extension. Maps K.Top.89.16. is a more standard version of the map that was published in the 1631 Latin text edition of the atlas Appendix Theatri ... et Atlantis. It is identified as such by the Latin text to verso with the signature "DDDDDD" at the bottom of the page (see Van der Krogt, P. Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici,Volume II, atlas 2:021, map 83, page 42).

Maps K.Top.89.16.

The Catalogue of Maps, Prints, Drawings, etc., forming the geographical and topographical collection attached to the Library of his late Majesty King George the third, etc., London, 1829, which was essentially the collection inventory on its transfer from George IV to the British Museum that has been masquerading as its catalogue since publication in 1829 (thus highlighting the value in the current cataloguing project), listed this second Hondius Bohemia map as "Eadem Tabula" (= “the same map”) where the previous listing was "Bohemiae Tabula per Judocum Hondium, 1620”. They are clearly not the same map and their differences are cartographically, bibliographically and historically important.

To further support the K.Top cataloguing project and the potential for subsequent discoveries please visit the British Library website.

Kate Marshall 

* rhapsody, n. “3. gen. a. A miscellany or medley; esp. a muddled collection of words, ideas, etc. Now rare.” From the Oxford English Dictionary online.

The recent attack by al-Shabab gunmen on a university in Garissa, north-eastern Kenya, demonstrates the threat still posed by the group, despite its losing control of the main cities and ports in Somalia. Conventional military tactics often prove ineffective against them, as they melt away and blend into the civilian population, then re-group to strike, as one BBC article put it, ‘like mosquitoes in the night’.

Two sheets in the War Office Archive reveal the use of similar, light-footed tactics, albeit in a different scenario, against British military forces there over 100 years ago -

Detail of WOMAT/AFR/BEA/32

In November 1900 the British Sub-Commissioner in Jubaland, Arthur Jenner, was killed while making a tour of the interior through areas inhabited by the nomadic Ogaden tribe. This part of southern Somalia was at that time under British administration within the East Africa Protectorate, and had in the preceding months been largely peaceful – Jenner was travelling with only a light escort, and was probably killed at the instigation of an Ogaden chief whom he had previously detained on suspicion of the murder of Somali policemen. According to one contemporary account, ‘It was well known that [the] murder was due to personal motives and should not have been treated as a political revolt’. However, a caravan of local traders had also recently been attacked, and shortly afterwards a report was sent back to London suggesting the imminent uprising of the whole Ogaden tribe.

Detail of WOMAT/AFR/BEA/32

By January 1901 a force of 600 troops, the Ogaden Punitive Force, had assembled at Kismayu on the Somali coast with a transport of 590 camels, around 900 porters and a number of carts, donkeys and oxen. A plan of Kismayu shows new infrastructure put in place in advance of their arrival. The official report states -

‘Preparations for the expedition were now hurried on... A trolley line 1,200 yards long was laid down from the pier to the town, where two sheds were prepared for the storage of rations, etc. The water supply was improved and extra wells were dug for the large number of transport animals which were expected… The defences of the town were at the same time strengthened and a hospital was established.’

Detail of WOMAT/AFR/BEA/28

 Detail of WOMAT/AFR/BEA/28

The troops marched inland from Kismayu across hostile terrain - labels indicating ‘Thick Bush’, ‘Dense Thorn’, ‘Very dense Thorn’, and the description ‘Dry’ pepper the expedition map – as far as Afmadu, where the Ogaden Sultan was quickly captured and sent down to the coast. From there a flying column of almost 400 men continued into unknown territory to the north-west, where the chiefs linked to Jenner’s murder were said to be.

Detail of WOMAT/AFR/BEA/32

For days as they advanced the troops saw fresh tracks around them in the sand, but at no point did they see the enemy they knew was there. Eventually, at a place on the map marked ‘Samasa’, they halted to make a reconnaissance, and even as they pitched camp a force of Ogaden militia rushed from the surrounding bush.

Detail of WOMAT/AFR/BEA/32

The attack was repelled, but the British beat a retreat, first to Afmadu, accompanied by the Ogaden at a distance, and from there back to Kismayu, where they arrived on 12 March.

Three months later the Ogaden Punitive Force relinquished its activities and left the area, after the captured Sultan ‘promised on behalf of the tribe to pay a fine of 5,000 cattle and to do his best to obtain the surrender of Mr Jenner’s murderers’.

But back in London the expedition was considered a fiasco. Commenting on the difficulty of making war in this terrain against such nimble opponents, the Commissioner of the East Africa Protectorate, Sir Charles Eliot, declared, ‘If our officers will avoid getting murdered in future we had better let the Somali alone, and avoid such conflicts between a lion and a swallow.’

 

Nicholas Dykes

The British East Africa portion of the War Office Archive is being conserved, catalogued and digitised with generous funding from the Indigo Trust.

Further Reading:

Mary Harper, Somalia's al-Shabab: Striking like mosquitoes, 26 Feb 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-26343248

Frontier and Overseas Expeditions from India, Compiled in the Intelligence Branch Division of the Chief of the Staff Army Head Quarters India, Vol. 6, 1911

H.R. Tate, Some Early Reminiscences of a Transport Officer: Ashanti Field Force and Ogaden Punitive Force, in Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol 41, No. 163, April 1942

T.H.R. Cashmore, Studies in District Administration in the East Africa Protectorate (1895-1918), Nov 1965

WOMAT/AFR/BEA/28

WOMAT/AFR/BEA/32