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CABO VERDE ISLANDS: A Collection of 10 Survey Maps of the Cabo Verde Islands

980.00€

A collection of 10 maps of the Cabo Verde Archipelago, being 9 individual island maps produced between 1922 and 1930 by the special mapping team, the Missão Geográfica de Cabo Verde, being the first maps of the islands predicated upon complete systematic trigonometric surveys; plus, a 1960 official general map of the archipelago featuring extensive manuscript additions of air and ferry routes – all of the maps very seldom appear on the market.

Additional information

Code	70110
Author	MISSÃO GEOGRÁFICA DE CABO VERDE / COMISSÃO DE CARTOGRAFIA.
Place and Year	Published in Portugal, 1922-30 and 1960 (please see below for details).

1 in stock

Description
Additional information

Description

The Cabo Verde (Cape Verde) Islands are a volcanic archipelago located between 600 and 850 km off the cast of Senegal. Comprising 10 main islands, plus additional islets, their total land area amounts to 4,033 sq. km. Geographically, the chain is divided onto two sets of islands; in the north, running diagonally (northwest to southeast), are the Ilhas do Barlavento, the windward islands (Santo Antão, São Vicente, Santa Luzia, Ilhéu Branco, Ilhéu Raso, São Nicolau, Sal, and Boa Vista); while in the south, running diagonally (southwest tot northeast), are the Ilhas do Sotovento, the leeward islands (Bravo, Fogo, São Tiago/Santiago and Maio).

Cabo Verde was uninhabited before Portuguese and Italian mariners discovered the chain around 1456. The Portuguese first settled the islands in 1462, making it the first European colony in the tropics.

For centuries, the islands’ economy thrived as a key entrepôt in the brutal slave trade, even as the islands themselves possessed few natural resources. The majority of Cabo Verde’s population soon consisted of slaves imported from mainland Africa and, in time, their descendants created a rich and unique cabo-verdiano culture.

Cabo Verde’s economy declined sharply in the early and mid-19^th century due the collapse of the slave trade, while severe droughts caused much hardship and mass emigration. However, later in the century, Cabo Verde, and especially the port of Mindelo, on the island of São Vicente, prospered as a revictualling base for ships along key Transatlantic shipping routes.

While consisting of islands of great natural beauty, and magnificent food and music, life was rarely easy in Cabo Verde. Popular discontent with the Portuguese regime boiled over in the 1960s into a struggle for self-determination. Cabo Verde gained its independence in 1975.

The Modern Mapping of the Cabo Verdes & the Missão Geográfica do Arquipélago de Cabo Verde

The Cabo Verdes, located along major international shipping routes, were a priority for hydrographic surveying. During the first half of the 19^th century, the islands were scientifically charted by the British Royal Navy, along with Portuguese naval surveys conducted under the auspices of Admiral António Lopes da Costa Almeida.

In the 1880s, Portugal’s newly founded colonial mapping agency, the Commissão de Cartographia, charged Lieutenant Ernesto (later Admiral) Júlio de Carvalho e Vasconcellos (1852 – 1930), the country’s finest hydrographer, with conducting the first broadly scientific surveys of the Cabo Verdes, as a corollary to his mapping for laying undersea telegraph lines (the Cabo Verdes were key waystations for key routes). While his resulting maps, published between 1885 and 1894 (maps were published for all the islands, save the Ilha de Maio), represented a masterful accomplishment, Vasconcellos’s efforts were limited by time and resources, such that they were not of complete systematic trigonometrical surveys, and notably, he was not able to precisely express the contours of the extreme topography by use of contours line (instead he relied upon the vague technique of shading).

Shortly thereafter, the Cabo Verde-native, Christiano José de Senna Barcellos (1854 – 1915), published the first atlas of the islands, the Roteiro de archipelago de Cabo Verde.

(Lisbon: Typographia do Jornal, 1892).

As World War I wound down, the Portuguese government planned ambitious programmes for infrastructure and agrarian development in the Cabo Verdes. However, it was clear that these endeavours would be hindered by a lack of precisely accurate maps of the islands, predicted upon complete systemic trigonometrical surveys. Consequently, in 1918, the Commissão de Cartographia formed the Missão Geográfica do Arquipélago de Cabo Verde (1918-32), as special unit that engaged many of Portugal’s finest military engineers, headed by Commander Filipe de Carvalho, that would map each of the islands to the most rigorous standards, using the most advanced equipment and techniques. This would be a very demanding mission, as the Cabo Verdes were incredibly rugged, mostly barren, sun-baked lands, being amongst the most gruelling places to reconnoitre in the world.

Fortunately, the Missão Geográfica had a precedent to emulate, as the similarly rugged volcanic islands of the São Tomé und Príncipe were, between 1916 and 1918, successfully mapped to the desired exacting standards by Gago Coutinho, who was soon to become a world-famous aviator, completing the first flight across the Southern Atlantic, from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro.

The Missão Geográfica acted with amazing speed, yet care, to successfully accomplish the systematic trigonometrical surveying of the Cabo Verdes, resulting in 10 individual island maps, issued in Lisbon by the Commissão de Cartographia between 1921 and 1930.

The surveys were hailed as a major tour de force and were favourably regarded internationally. They served as the authoritative base map of the islands until the 1960s, being used as the blueprints for planning infrastructure and re-forestation programmes. They were only partially superseded in the 1960s when additional mapping was undertaken as the Portuguese authorities sought to foil the budding Cabe Verdean independence movement.

A fine article, available online, has been written about the work of the Missão Geográfica do Arquipélago de Cabo Verde, Paula Cristina Santos’s Aplicações geodésicas no Arquipélago de Cabo Verde, [Conference Paper:] Atas do colóquio internacional Cabo Verde e Guiné-Bissau: Percursos do saber e da ciência, Lisboa, 21-23 de Junho de 2012 (Lisbon: Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical, 2013), please see this link:

https://coloquiocvgb.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/p06c02-paula-santos.pdf

The Map Collection in Focus

The present map collection features 10 maps, of which Part A, consists of 9 items, and concerns the maps of the Missão Geográfica do Arquipélago de Cabo Verde (dated 1922 to 1930). Part B, features a single map, being an official general map of the Cabe Verde Archipelago bearing extensive manuscript additions of aviation and ferry routes between the islands.

PART A. Maps of the Missão Geográfica do Arquipélago de Cabo Verde

Present here are 9 of the 10 island maps of the Cabo Verdes produced by the Missão Geográfica do Arquipélago de Cabo Verde (the only one not present is the Carta da Ilha do Sal (1921)). Importantly, they are each the first printings of the first complete scientific surveys of their respective islands. Notably, the Carta da Ilha de Maio / 1928 (#3), below represents the first scientific map of the island of any kind, as it was the only part of the archipelago for which Vasconcellos did not produce a map.

While several institutional examples of each of the maps are held worldwide (usually between 8 and 14 examples traced), in recent years the maps only very rarely appear on the market, while a collection of serval maps together is quite a special find. Indeed, as the maps were often intensively used in the field (as the present examples testify), their survival rate is very low.

Each of the extremely detailed maps shows the rugged topography with innumerable contour lines and spot heights, as well as the rims of volcanic cones. All rivers and coastal features are marked, all towns and villages are labelled, while all roads, tracks and lighthouses are shown. Additionally, the maps mark the locations of the dozens of triangulation points used by the Missão Geográfica’s surveyors.