Africa

administrator or military officer to be employed while making a reconnaissance of the island in the tense period leading up to World War I; featuring 26 colour photolithographed maps and 1 legend sheet all published in Antananarivo by the colonial military press, the ‘Service géographique de l’Etat Major du groupe de l’Afrique Orientale’, including 19 provincial maps and 6 large-format, sophisticated…

  The first edition of the first map of the island of São Tomé to be predicated upon systematic triangulated surveys, by Gago Coutinho, who subsequently became a world famous aviator, published in Lisbon in 1922. 

  A highly attractive separately issued Ottoman map of North-Eastern Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Sudan), also embracing adjacent parts of the Middle East and Southern Europe.

An extremely rare Nazi report on the state of roads in Germany's former African colonies and the Belgian Congo, made early in World Wat II in preparation for plans for the Third Reich to regain its African empire either by diplomacy or force, being a printed copy of an original typescript labelled as 'Als Manuskript gedruckt' ('Printed as a manuscript'), issued…

  A rare, richly illustrated book in Ottoman script on Africa, North Pole, Australia and South America.

  A scarce, pioneering atlas of Africa with 18 colour plates featuring 50 maps designed by the leading Vienna map house of Freytag & Berndt, including some sophisticated works of thematic cartography and original maps showcasing the level of Western knowledge of the continent, made to capitalize upon the Africa-mania that swept the general public in the wake of the…

  A rare ephemeral Ottoman map of Africa was printed on the back cover of a notebook   8°. [48 pp.] manuscript in pencil on paper with printed stripes, stapled, original pink illustrated wrappers (front cover with light water-staining, tears, loss of image and recently repaired with scotch tape, map with soft folds and tiny tears in the margins, staples…

A complete set of the contemporary Ottoman translations of Schweinfurth’s influential travelogue to Africa. 8°: 911 pp. with black and white illustrations, folding map, coloured in outline, one toned lithograph with hand coloured details, contemporary Ottoman black calf with gilt and debossed decoration (remboîtage in a contemporary Ottoman binding) (minor age-toning and foxing, holes in the map on the crossings…

  Lithograph with original colour: 18 x 23 cm (7 x 9 inches) (soft fold, slightly age-toned and stained).

A very rare, large format, separately issued map of Africa that is perhaps the last great map of the continent to be printed in Ottoman Turkish script, with attractive colours and adorned with the flags of major African states and colonies, published in Istanbul for the Kitabhane-yi Sudi bookshop.   Colour off-set print (Good, some light staining, wear and some…

  Colour lithograph, folding into original printed card covers bearing title and view on front cover and a map of the Léopoldville area on back cover (Excellent condition, Map amazingly clean, bright and crisp, seemingly barely ever opened, only the lightest marginal wear to covers), 86 x 68.5 cm (34 x 27 inches).   A very rare and early cartographic…

A trio of very large format diagrams (2 blueprint maps, 1 line chart) made for the Companhia de Petróleo de Angola in the 1920s, when it was prospecting the Cuanza (Kwanza) Basin, one of Africa’s great petroleum deposits; the works were drafted by James J. McGowan, a larger-than-life Irish-American engineer who later became a pillar of Luanda’s business community; the…

  A very rare atlas made by the Berlin Missionary Society, one of the most important missionary organizations in Africa and China during the 19th and early 20th Centuries, featuring 16 original maps made by missionary cartographers, including important figures such as Alexander Merensky and Bernhard Struck, containing 14 maps of South and East Africa and 2 maps of China;…

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…

  A highly important and attractive work on the Eighth Xhosa War (1850-3), a critical conflict in which the British scored a crushing defeat upon the Xhosa, so securing permanent dominance over the Eastern Frontier regions of the Cape Colony, a victory secured by the ‘scorched earth’ offensive launched by Governor George Cathcart from the spring of 1852 to the…

A map from Umûm Vilayât-ı Şâhâneyi Hâvi Küçük Atlas - Umûmî Küçük Atlas (General Small Atlas)   Chromolithograph. 9 x 13,5 cm (3.5 x 5.3 inches).

  A stellar moment of African cartography and inland hydrography, being the first atlas, or accurate, complete large-scale map, of the 1,724 km-long navigable route of the Upper Congo River from Léopoldville (Kinshasa) to Stanleyville, the only natural passage into the heart of Africa, made during World War I for the use of steamer captains by the specialist Belgian colonial…

  Extremely rare – possibly a unique survivor - a stellar large format blueprint edition of a military survey of Ismailia, Egypt, the planned city that was long the headquarters of the Suez Canal Company, made by the British Royal Engineers during the tense period between World War II (when the canal was the ultimate strategic objective of the Nazi…

  A very rare and important Arabic language school atlas of Egypt, commissioned by the country’s Education Ministry and Ministry of Finance, emblematic of the country’s emerging national awakening whereby Egyptians gradually regained control over their country’s economy and institutions from the British quasi-colonial regime; in this vein, such cartographic works in the Arabic language, made for the use of…

This is the extremely rare first edition of the Italian Navy’s sea chart of stretch of the Somali coast around El Ataleh, some ways up from Mogadishu.          Zincograph (Good, but with noticeable wear along old folds with some toning in upper area), 63 x 59 cm (25 x 23 inches).  

  A German map shows Abyssinia on the eve of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, in 1935. 

  Colour lithograph, 120 x 79 cm (47.2 x 31.1 inches) (soft folds slightly age-toned with tiny, partly repaired holes, tiny tears in margins, overall in a good clean condition).  

  The only known example of a fascinating cyanotype (blueprint) plan of Sekondi, capturing the Gold Coast’s (Ghana) main commercial port during the Edwardian boom period of economic and infrastructure development - a value artefact of the the Industrial Revolution and urbanism in Sub-Saharan Africa.  

  A very rare large format work from the sequence of the first broadly accurate maps of the Gold Coast (today’s Ghana), created by the Intelligence Division of the British War Office, with exceedingly detailed coverage of travel routes into the interior and the labelling of the domains of tribal nations, the present edition was made to guide British forces,…

This chart maps the mouth of the Jubba River in southern Somalia, long a vital lifeline for agriculture and trade.  The chart was made from surveys conducted by Commander Giovatto of the Italian Navy in 1908.    Zincograph (Very Good, some light toning and light wear along old folds), 53 x 61 cm (21 x 24 inches).  

An Italian map of the natural harbour of Kismaayo, in the far south of Somalia.     Photozincograph, with navigational markers heightened in yellow and some details added in manuscript in red pen, with pastedown date stamp in lower left corner (Very Good, some wear along old folds), 55.5 x 70.5 cm (22 x 27.5 inches).  

  A rare and highly attractive work of patriotic propaganda, being a large map of Libya celebrating Italy’s invasion of the country during the Italo-Turkish War (1911-2), created early in the conflict by the Societá editoriale milanese.   Colour print (Very Good, clean and bright, some wear along old folds, some minor marginal staining, far right margin, once bearing additional…

The first edition of the first comprehensive, scientifically accurate geological map of Libya, a grand, bilingual (English - Arabic) separately issued production primarily made to aid the country’s burgeoning oil industry; the result of a collaboration between Louis Conant and Gus Goudarzi, two of America’s most esteemed geologists, fulfilling a joint project of the U.S. State Department and the pro-Western…

Lithographed map with original hand colour, dissected into 18 sections and mounted upon original linen, folding into original dark green cloth covers with publisher’s pastedown label, publisher’s advertisements as front endpaper (Wrappers slightly pale with worm holes on the spine, internally clean), 51 x 70 cm (20 x 27.6 inches).

  A fine and scarce sea chart of St. Augustin’s (Anantson̈o) and Tullea (Toliara) bays, amongst the finest anchorages on the west coast of Madagascar, published by the leading chartmakers of Laurie & Whittle.

  Very rare – the first edition of Captain William Nichelson’s masterly large-format sea chart of St. Augustin’s Bay, Madagascar, a key harbour on the Mozambique Channel, along the route between Europe and India, first issued in the 1767 edition of William Herbert’s important atlas, ‘A New Directory for the East Indies’.

  The very rare first edition of the foundational map of the British colonial regime in Egypt; created by the Intelligence Department of the War Office on the eve of the Anglo-Egyptian War (1882), whereby Britain forcibly made Egypt a protectorate, so gaining dominance over the Suez Canal; predicated upon the best sources, the very large four-sheet work was the…

An exquisite ‘objet d’art’, being a unique example of William Faden’s map of the Battles of Abukir and Alexandria (1801), France’s ‘last stand’ in Egypt, printed on silk with details richly embroidered in coloured silk thread, clearly a prestation piece made for a highly important figure.   Copper engraving on silk with details contemporarily heightened in embroidery of coloured silk thread, contemporarily…

The authoritative chart of the harbour of Lourenço Marques (today Maputo, Mozambique), shown in the wake of World War II, showcasing what was one of Africa’s busiest and most modern ports, published by the British Admiralty.   Polychrome photolithograph on thick paper, contemporary hand-stamped price revision to title, rolled (Very Good, overall clean and bright, light wear along vertical centrefold),…

  An intriguing, and likely unique, artefact of the early era of Mozambican independence under the rule of the Socialist FRELIMO movement, being a map of the Mozambican capital Maputo (formerly Lourenço Marques), hastily published in the whiteprint method, that interestingly showcases the city with most of its major streets renamed after Socialist / Communist luminaries such Vladimir Lenin, Mao…

This is the first sea chart of the harbour of Massawa predicated upon proper scientific surveys, as well as one of the only detailed early maps of the city of Massawa as remodeled by the new Italian colonial regime.   Zincograph, with some navigation markers heightened in yellow, some contemporary manuscript navigational additions in pencil (Good, but with noticeable wear…

  An historically significant and beautifully rendered original manuscript map of Le Chateau de Reduit, the official residence of the Governor of Île de France (Mauritius), today the home of the President of Mauritius, depicting what was then a fortified working indigo plantation, a masterplan capturing the estate at an early stage in its development during the French colonial era,…

  An extremely rare separately-issued chart of the important port of Essaouira (formerly Mogador), Morocco, issued when the city was being transformed into the country’s greatest port, by Gerard Hulst van Keulen, masterfully engraved and of an uncommonly beautiful design.

MOROCCO (SPANISH / NORTHERN) / RIF WAR:  CUERPO DE ESTADO MAYOR DEL EJÉRCITO.   Madrid: Talleres del Depósito de la Guerra, December 1927.   Colour photolithograph, on 6 untrimmed and un-joined sheets of thick paper, housed in decorative printed paper sleave bearing blindstamp of the ‘Depósito de la Guerra’, rolling into original crimson tube bearing title in silver lettering (Very…

  Colour print, printed from both sides, 43 x 60 cm (17 x 23.6 inches) (soft folds, otherwise in a good condition).  

  An extremely rare and important sea chart depicting the mouth of the Limpopo River, in southern Mozambique; for centuries the Limpopo was one of the great transport corridors into the interior of southern Africa; the chart is based upon groundbreaking scientific surveys by a team of Portuguese naval officers, led by João António Ludovice, conducted in 1893, when the…

  An extremely rare and attractive late 19th century Portuguese sea chart of the mouth of the Rio Tejungo (today known as the Rio Moniga), a key trading port along the north-central coast of Mozambique, the chart being the first edition of the first scientific, trigonometric survey of estuary, conducted in 1898 by Lieutenant João Carlos da Silva Nogueira of…

An exceedingly rare – 1 of only 3 known examples - and historically consequential map; its contents enraged the people of Porto, helping to fuel the Republican Revolt that occurred there on January 31, 1891; the map, which embraces the midriff of Southern Africa, depicts Portugal’s premier colonies of Angola and Mozambique with greatly reduced boundaries, to the benefit of…

  An amazing and unique survivor, being a finely executed original manuscript map of the Praça de São Sebastião, the grand 16th century fortress which guarded the town of Ilha de Moçambique, the capital of Portuguese East Africa and a globally significant entrepôt for slaves, gold and ivory, and which today has the distinction of being the oldest complete fortress…

The most consequential map of Namibia made during the German colonial era, a gigantic 8-sheet work that is the first broadly accurate general map of what was the protectorate of Deutsch-Südwestafrika of a scale sufficient for operational use, compiled in great haste but with considerable skill, at the ‘Kolonial-kartographischen Institut’ in Berlin by the master cartographers Paul Sprigade and Max…

  An impressive archive consisting of a stellar original photograph and sixteen manuscript documents relating to the Comte d’Escayrac’s 1856 planned expedition to find the source of the White Nile, two years before John Hanning Speke successfully accomplished said objective, from the personal papers of Gabriel Aubaret, the mission’s second-in-command and subsequently a famous diplomat and a leading figure in…

The foundational map of Namibia – created on the eve of the formal colonization of the region by the venerable linguist, trader, and explorer Dr. Theophilus Hahn from his extensive personal reconnaissance and indigenous interviews, this monumental cartographic achievement accurately charts the routes, European settlements and missions, water sources, as well as the tribal territories and population distribution of the…

  Colour lithography, 96 x 63 cm (37.9 x 24.8 inches), (minor staining, tears repaired with modern tape and partly age-toned).  

[Fenn-i Coğrafya İçin Yazısız Harita Defteri. Harita Tersimi Usûlünün Mebâdisi / Blank Map Book for Science of Geography. The Basics of the Map Representation Method] آفريقا [Arika / Africa]   Ottoman filled-in blank atlas of Afrika with unique and exquisite original colour   8°. 22-28 pp. facing pages marked with same numbers [altogether 16 pp.] with hand coloured lithographed maps…

  Map of the Ottoman Empire with the Arabian Peninsula in the middle. Marked are the most important cities and the Hejaz Railway.   Colour lithography, 26 x 38 cm (10.2 x 14.9 inches), (soft fold in the middle slightly stained with tiny repaired holes and tears).

  Highly Important and Rare – a great monument of Enlightenment Era thematic cartography - Vicomte Grenier’s of sea chart showcasing his new, faster sailing routes across the Indian Ocean, discoveries which revolutionized European-Asian transportation and geopolitics.

  A 1778 manuscript map of the Spanish fortification Peñón de Alhucemas, off the Moroccan coast, was made by a North German officer and engineer Philip Ernst Colson.

A fantastic large-format propaganda broadside, or ‘wall newspaper’, made to celebrate the exploits of German General Erwin Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox’, and his Afrikakorps, printed in Fascist Spain in July 1942, before the pivotal showdown at El Alamein had been decided. 

  An extraordinary woodcut view of the Iberian enclave of Ceuta, on the north coast of Morocco, apparently a proof for Braun & Hogenberg’s famous copper engraved view of the city.

  A fine map of the Red Sea depicting Italy’s first major operation to establish an overseas colony, in Eritrea, commissioned by the Società Africana d’Italia, an influential lobbying-research organization, and originally published in an issue of their rare journal.

  An exceedingly rare map of a port in the Red Sea, printed on thin paper in Italian language, was sold separately for navigational uses.   Lithograph on thin paper, each 31 x 23 cm (12.2 x 9 inches).

  A very rare cartographic playing card featuring a map of Africa.

  An original manuscript sketch map of the Grahamstown-Great Fish River region of South Africa, the strategically critical ‘Eastern Frontier’ of the Cape Colony, made immediately in the wake of the Sixth European-Xhosa War (1834-6).

An amazing survivor, being an original manuscript caricature drafted during the Eighth European-Xhosa War (1850-3), one of the century-long series of brutal conflicts between Dutch, and more recently British, forces and the formidable Xhosa nation for control over the Eastern Cape Frontier, South Africa’s ‘Wild, Wild East’; involving a very clever use of imagery and dialogue, the caricature shows two…

A map from Umûm Vilayât-ı Şâhâneyi Hâvi Küçük Atlas - Umûmî Küçük Atlas (General Small Atlas)   Chromolithograph. 9 x 13,5 cm (3.5 x 5.3 inches).

  A unique example of a very rare chart of South Africa, with a curious Australian connection! Commander John Lamb’s chart showing the 1822 route of his ship ‘Hannah’, fighting the Agulhas Current rounding the Cape of Good Hope; but this example with a manuscript pastedown title regarding the route of the ‘H.M.S. Tamar’, plus manuscript traces of its route,…

A colossal ‘master plan’ of the Kinross Gold Mine in Transvaal (measuring 1.9 x 1.7 metres!), made by engineers around 1970 to showcase every detail of the immense subterranean world of one of South Africa’s largest and most productive gold operations; the mine since became world famous for the 1986 Kinross Mining Disaster, which highlighted the Apartheid regime’s horrific record…

  An extremely rare early Bloemfontein imprint featuring seminal primary sources concerning the end of the Orange Free State-Basotho Wars which secured the Anglo-Afrikaner balance of power in the region, as well as the security of what would become Lesotho, commissioned by the Volksraad of the Orange Free State as a work of ‘intellectual propaganda’ advancing its national claims. 

  Lithograph with original colour: 18 x 23 cm (7 x 9 inches) (soft fold, slightly age-toned and stained).

  A set of original, exquisitely executed manuscript plans of the blockhouse of the Prince of Wales Battery, one of the key components of the elaborate new defensive system that the British constructed around Cape Town (South Africa) during their first occupation of the colony from 1795 to 1803; drafted by Captain (later Major-General) George Bridges, the commanding Royal Engineer…

  An Exceptionally rare - seemingly unrecorded – and impressively large ‘Sunprint’ or cyanotype map on cotton cloth, depicting Major Robert Lyle McClintock’s advanced topographical survey of the environs of Potchefstroom, South Africa, executed in the period following the Second Anglo-Boer War, made in Potchefstroom after the original survey composed in Pretoria. 

  A pair of fine, separately issued maps that represent the first broadly accurate general  mapping of Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan; important masterpieces of frontier military cartography printed during the Siege of Khartoum, and which served as the definitive maps used by Anglo-Egyptian forces for the remainder of the Mahdist War (1881-99), the epic contest for control of Sudan;…

Charles George GORDON, aka “Gordon of Khartoum” (1833 - 1884).   Manuscript, [Khartoum, Autumn 1879].   An original manuscript of extraordinary quality and interest, being a report written by the legendary British soldier-adventurer Sir Charles George Gordon, aka “Gordon of Khartoum”, in his capacity as Governor-General of Sudan, in the service of the Egyptian Khedive, articulating his well-conceived plan to…

  A rare and important work predicated upon the latest reconnaissance that was the most advanced map of the Khartoum-Omdurman region of Sudan to date, made by the British War Office as a vital strategic aide in the immediate run up to the Battle of Omdurman (September 2, 1898), the decisive showdown of the Mahdist War, the 18-year-long contest for…

A seemingly unrecorded special ‘emergency’ issue of Max Moisel’s groundbreaking map of Deutsch-Ostafrika (today’s mainland Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi), issued in haste by British War Office immediately following the outbreak of World War I, whereupon East Africa became a surprisingly intense conflict theatre; the present example bearing evidence of field use, featuring contemporary manuscript additions.   Photolithographic print, with contemporary…

Stanford's map of West Africa.   Lithographed map with original hand colour, dissected into 21 sections and mounted upon original linen, folding into original red cloth covers with publisher’s pastedown label, publisher’s advertisements as front endpaper (Good, clean example), 52 x 77 cm (20.5 x 30.3 inches).

  A very rare lithographed postcard map of the Vilayet Tripoli in Libya in Ottoman script was made in Istanbul by a Romanian born publisher Tüccarzâde İbrahim Hilmi Çığıraçan.

  8°,  300 pp. with charts, interleaved colour folding map, contemporary black calf spine with gilt lettering and decoration with black cloth boards (two pages with tiny loss of paper in white margins, old library stamps on the title page, minor staining and foxing, small holes in the binding).  

A rare map of Tunisia made by Heinrich Kiepert, the great German cartographer who was the world’s foremost authority on the geography of the Arab World, published the year that France colonized the country; the map features a wealth of topographic, infrastructure, ethnographic and archaeological details, some of which were gleaned from the recent expedition of the German historian Gustav…

  A very rare, large-format atlas of the sea floor off the western and northwestern coasts of Africa, from Morocco down to Sierra Leone, made by the German Navy during the height of World War II expressly for the use of U-Boats; with 24 plates of highly sophisticated and brightly coloured sea charts predicated upon novel, recent intelligence, it was…

A fascinating itinerary map of the route of the U.S. Army’s Ninth Infantry Division during their World War II active combat tours, featuring their routes in North Africa, Sicily, England, France (including the D-Day Landings) and Germany; published in Germany only 2 months after the end of the war as a memento for the troops – notably, one of only…