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.