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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Friedrich Jeppe: Mapping the Transvaal c. 1850-1899
Author:Carruthers, JaneISNI
Year:2003
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:29
Issue:4
Period:December
Pages:955-975
Language:English
Geographic terms:South Africa
Transkei
Subjects:colonial conquest
cartography
History and Exploration
colonialism
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0305707032000135914
Abstract:This article discusses some of the maps and mapmakers in the late nineteenth-century Transvaal at a time when nascent colonial 'nationalities' and subimperialisms were in the process of delineation. In the historical circumstances of the region in that era, with the uncertain hegemony of the Transvaal Boers and other polities, both local and international, over the geographical space between the Vaal and Limpopo rivers and beyond to the north, mapping played an important part in negotiations over colonial conquest. With an emphasis on the career of Friedrich Jeppe, and in the context of a number of mapmakers of his time, the article argues that cartography - as promoted in Europe through the publications of geographical societies - was a visible way of securing settler domination and providing conceptual reality in advancing the formation of the South African Republic as a modern nation-State. Moreover, given the rivalry in the region between the Boer Republics and the British colonies, two streams of cartographical capacity and audience can be discerned. One can be broadly defined as 'British', located in the Cape Colony and Natal, and the other was an alternative from Germany that was promoted north of the Vaal River. That Jeppe introduced a German scientific cartographical perspective in mapping the Transvaal is further explored here. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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