Above, I’ve presented just a few maps and satellite images of Southern Africa. Apart from the ones I’ve selected, many images and much valuable information about Southern Africa can be found at the following online sources:
- Stanford’s Maps of Africa: An Online Exhibit, which features hundreds of maps with good metadata. It’s also worth searching Stanford’s catalog for the subject heading South Africa > Maps > Early works.
- The same approach can be taken for other major catalogs, such as at the Library of Congress or Harvard, but Stanford generally has better collections.
- For a good collection of images, look at the category on Wikimedia Commons called Old Maps of South Africa.
- Perhaps the most detailed information is provided not by a library but rather by Geographicus, an antique map dealer. Their collection of African maps is truly extraordinary, though it does not always provide large, easy-to-access images.
- NASA’s Gateway to Astronaut Photography of the Earth, which features hundreds of images of South Africa (taken from space!) from 1968 to the present.
- Finally, a simple search on NASA’s Visible Earth catalog yields many beautiful results.
Hi, I stumbled on your blog while looking at a few cadastral maps, and followed the images.
For historic maps, there are a lot of University dspace (digitized items) available particularly of Southern Africa. (I say this as a historian of SA who works on the history of surveying, mapping, and colonial land policy.) The University of Cape Town, the University of Pretoria, the University of the Witwatersrand, and UNISA all have fairly robust dspace units. http://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar/ is a link to the big Open Access Repository link system run via Nottingham, and is updated often (use Browse to get to the regions/countries). It includes not only maps but also historic texts that are digital, government documents, some manuscripts, and often articles that are available to the public. I’m delighted to see others with an interest in the history of geography of southern Africa, and Africa generally, both in applied human geography, environmental issues, and in the formation of images for colonial (and anticolonial) purposes. Of course, the themes and ideas extend far beyond merely SA or the Cape!
If needed, I have a lot of additional resources, and would be happy to share if they are of use.
regards
L F Braun
Associate Professor, History
University of Oregon