The Bright Continent

I’m a bit of a junkie for weird or inaccurate or simply dated cartography. The BBC’s brief history of mapping Africa (in partnership with the Royal Geographic Society) thus pushes all the right buttons. Give it a watch.

The important part: Early maps of a well-populated African continent were flush with detail; regions were identified by tribe, trade, physical landmarks or other qualities—local fauna, religion—and few hard political boundaries existed. John Sudbury’s 1600s map draws a pretty picture of a region untouched by eurocentric revisions (“high modernist,” to borrow from James Scott) that produced the modern, surprisingly rectilinear political map of Africa.

Anyway, I’m burying the lede. In this map, the body of water off the West African coast was called “The Aethiopian Ocean.” 

That’s right: As of the 17th century, “The Atlanticke” was only a sea. And as recently as the 1850s, it remained such. We’re familiar with the grand contours of dispossession and human bondage and colonial ambition subsequently visited upon Africa, but I have a very specific question: Who got to wipe an ocean off the map?

If you can find out, or get to London to view the exhibition before April 28th, I’ll envy you.