1895 Map of the Eastern Congo Basin showing the tracks of 10 explorers

A rare 1895 Royal Geographic Society map of the southeastern Congo River Basin - the first detailed map to compile over twenty years’ exploration along the courses of the Sankuru, Lomami and Lualaba rivers. This period culminated in the Congo Arab War, a conflict pitting the Belgian proxy government against a coalition of Arab slavers attempting to wrest control of the Congo Free State.

On the Map

The rivers are drawn in sharp detail, showing myriad tributaries, rapids and sketching in roughly the surrounding topography. Better detail is given for villages, settlements and tribal areas. Of paramount interest are the tracks of ten separate European explorers who, between 1870 and 1894, undertook expeditions along these rivers. These routes are printed in red, differentiated from one another by pattern, and are keyed to a list. These start with the famous Livingstone expedition to find the source of the Congo, and end with the 1892-94 military expedition of Baron Dhanis, under whom served the author of the map and the article associated with it.

The Congo Arab War

This part of the Congo Free State was in the 1890s the scene of the Congo Arab War, largely a proxy war between tribes allied with the Belgian Congo Free State, and those allied with a coalition of Arab Slavers under Tippu Tib and his son, Sefu bin Hamid. The war, which was positioned as an effort to eradicate the Arab slave trade in the region, resulted in the consolidation of Belgian power over the remote quarters of the Congo Free State. The main source of new information to the map, Captain Sidney Langford Hinde, was a medical officer and naturalist serving with the Belgian Force Publique during the war, the events of which he describes in a 1895 article in The Geographical Journal entitled ‘Three Years’ Travel in the Congo Free State.’ (The present map was produced to accompany the article.) The article - and consequently the map - chronicles the Dhanis expedition’s progress through country inhabited by cannibal tribes, villages destroyed by marauding slavers, fording treacherous rapids, and the eventual defeat of the Arab forces at Nyangwe on the shore of the Lualaba River, one of the uppermost tributaries of the Congo. The war appears to have largely hinged on the defection from the Arab to the European camp of the tribal leader and former slaver Ngongo Lutete, whose stronghold of N’Gandu is shown on the map on the Lomami River.

Sources

The map was compiled from various current sources by Bernard Vernon Darbishire on behalf of the Royal Geographic Society, including manuscript maps provided by Hinde. The article notes:

With the work of the older explorers, whose routes are laid down on the map, has been incorporated material supplied by captain Hinde, in the shape of sketch-maps made by himself and other officials of the Congo State…

… The courses of the Lukunga and Lualaba from Mbuli’s to Lukuna are from Captain Hinde’s compass-survey, with additions from the survey made by Mr. Mohun (‘Mouvement Geographique,'1894, p. 84). The course of the Lualaba below Lukuna is from Dr. Lenz’s survey.

Thus, the map compiles a broad array of extremely up-to-date reports coming to the attention of the Royal Geographic Society membership, resulting in a sharply detailed map of a region otherwise virtually unknown to Europeans barely more than a decade before, and which to this day remains poorly mapped.

Effective Occupation

The 1884-85 Berlin Conference adopted the Doctrine of Effective Occupation as a baseline for establishing and maintaining colonial claims. According to this doctrine, colonial powers needed to prove 'effective occupation.' This means they needed to establish the existence of treaties with local powers, show that their flags were being flown, or have active forts in the region. The doctrine led to increased European military and economic activity in Africa as individual powers sought to bolster their 'effective occupation' claims. While this, in part, led to the advancement of infrastructure in Africa, including the construction of modern facilities such as hospitals and railroads, it also led to more intensive direct ownership of colonial lands by Europeans and the exploitation of indigenous peoples.

Publication History and Census

There is no record of this map appearing on the market. OCLC shows only three separate copies of this map in institutional collections.