What I See in Historic European Maps of Africa Reminds Me of What I See in the News Today

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by Evan Spencer
December 7 2021

The purpose of The Compass Rose is to raise awareness of Special Collections' resources and to foster the use of these resources. The blog series also reports significant new programs, initiatives, and acquisitions of Special Collections.

Today, Special Collections presents a special guest post from Art undergraduate student Rebeca Compean-Serrano. She discusses how imagery shapes perception, especially with respect to race and historic attitudes towards “the other.” Rebeca developed this post as part of Art of Sub-Saharan Africa class, which explored the Searching for Africa exhibition, now on display at University of Texas at Arlington Libraries’ Special Collections. View blog posts from Rebeca's classmates, Deb Vickery and Ashlei Jones.

Depicting a person through art goes back to prehistoric ages, when natural pigments on rock surfaces would be used to illustrate important people, activities, and animals. The person creating such depictions, the artist, intentionally chose how the portrayal of the person will be captured visually. Then, as now, through the details chosen by the artist, a viewer then develops an opinion, not just an opinion of the product the artist created but of the specific person depicted: who they are and what they are like. Consistent depictions of groups of people purposefully illustrated can then lead to certain ideas developing about them because viewers are repeatedly seeing specific imagery. This process of image and meaning making applies to the depictions of native Africans, illustrated as European colonizers began to explore Africa. My classmate Deb Vickery discussed some of the first depictions of Africans by Europeans in her recent Compass Rose post entitled “From benign to bestial: the ongoing African journey back to beauty found.”

A map depicting the western shore of Africa, with artwork depicting African and European men in conflict and a legend.

Figure 1: Pieter van der Aa, Andries Battels Scheeptogt na Brasile, engraving with applied color on paper, (Leiden: Pierre van der Aa, 1706). The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Special Collections, Gift of Dr. Jack Franke.

When European artists portrayed African natives, they were communicating “otherness,” centering paganism (as discussed by Vickery), and creating a false narrative of inherent violence. Native Africans are often portrayed hunting, fighting, or attacking and are also depicted with some form of weaponry or amongst animal figures.  One common factor in such depictions is an aura of danger and savagery. This imagery of African peoples transcended the world of art, also appearing in outlets such as popular newspapers, scholarly studies, and maps.

The Searching for Africa exhibition at Special Collections features a map that exemplifies the use of this kind of imagery: a 1706 map created by Pieter van der Aa entitled Andries Battels Scheeptogt na Brasile; door een XVIII Jarige Gevangenschap, in d'Africaanse gewesten van Angola en Loango Voleynde (Figure 1). As seen in the bottom left of the work, van der Aa depicts European colonizers being attacked by a group of Africans (Figure 2). It is true that such attacks did occur; however, there was never a focus placed on the reasoning behind those attacks, such as native Africans’ concern for protecting their land. By highlighting the attacks without providing any form of context, Europeans were taking individual instances and making them representations of African communities in their entirety. Africans came to be visually synonymous with danger, violence, and savage or animalistic activities, and were often depicted very near to animals (as in the cartouche of Figure 3). Images build meaning. To many Europeans, these images of African meant, and could even “prove,” that the human value of an African did not compare to a European. These perceptions justified colonization, a process that in the European mind centered on “civilizing” the “uncivilized” and animalistic African.

Artwork from a map depicting European and African men engaging in conflict

Figure 2: Detail from Figure 1 highlighting the attack scene presenting Africans as violent and destructive.

These images and their meanings to Europeans neglected any acknowledgement of authentic African cultures. Just like Europeans, Africans experienced rich cultural traditions that involved celebrations, spirituality, love, loss, etc. For example, the Central African coastline centralized in the van der Aa map (Figure 1) was home to the peoples collectively known today as the Fang, who prioritized a reliquary tradition for the long-lasting memorialization of deceased family members as ancestors (National Museum of African Art 2002). Such aspects of African native life were rarely highlighted in European visual culture (and still aren’t today) and were often misunderstood or demonized when reported by colonial Europeans. Such ignorance and/or misunderstanding also played a role in the lessening of the perceived human value of African people because the lack of diverse and accurate imagery prevented Europeans from being able to relate to native Africans. Without seeing an aspect of European daily life in African daily life, the division between the two expanded, as did the European ignorance of African culture.

A map of Africa, with art depicting European and African interaction, as well as animal life

Figure 3: Johann Matthias Haas, Africa Secundum legitimas Projectionis Stereographicae regulas..., engraving with applied color on paper, 46 x 55 cm., 1737. The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Special Collections, Gift of Dr. Jack Franke.

Africans became the quintessential “other,” a social identity considered significantly different than the social majority of European cultures (Zevallos 2011). Without seeing the realities of African life and only being exposed to acts of violence and facets of “otherness,” the conclusion developed that dark-skinned Africans were less like light-skinned people and more like animals. Pseudo-scientists of the 19th century compared the heads and faces of African natives to those of animals, specifically apes (Jacobs 2018), which lent more fuel to the notions that Africans, like wild animals, were dangerous and would benefit from European control. This perception was taken to the extreme through the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the development of “human zoos” that displayed Africans for the entertainment of Europeans and Euro-Americans (Putnam 2012). To learn about how such horrific practices came very close to home, consider the horrific story of a man from Central Africa, eventually known as Ota Benga, who was caged in the “Monkey House” with chimps in the Bronx Zoo in 1906 (Delaney 2021).

The animalistic comparisons of Africans to apes, implying savagery, inspired racist ideas that are still prominent today. Throughout the world, African people are still viewed as being “less than” Europeans, specifically Caucasians, and attributed characteristics of violent tendencies, low intelligence, and less-than-human status. In fact, studies as recent as 2018 conducted by psychologist Philip Atiba Goff indicate that the “apelike” stereotype attributed to African people and people of African descent still persists in America today (Jacobs 2018).

Such views can and have been used to justify violence. An important example that impacted an African American person is the murder of Eric Garner, a Black man from New York (Figure 4). In this situation, Garner may have been selling untaxed cigarettes on the street when he broke up a fight among other men and was questioned by plainclothes police officers at the scene (Murray et al. 2014).  An officer who perceived Garner only as a criminal took hold of Garner and impeded his breathing using an illegal technique (ibid). Multiple officers pinned Garner to the ground and eventually killed him (ibid). After the murder, some people attempted to justify the actions taken by the officers by focusing on the illegal act Garner was alleged to have engaged in instead of viewing Garner as a person in need who repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe!” (ibid). As one of the earliest news articles to report this murder details, Garner was a father, grandfather, husband, and friend (ibid). Although this occurred in 2014, situations like this have happened countless times previously and still are prominent today, as in the now infamous murder of George Floyd in 2020. In addition to acts of violence, African people and/or people of African descent are often hyper-sexualized, underrepresented in media and government, and underrecognized for their contributions to society. These facets of our society today stem from prejudiced notions initiated by early European colonizers.

A man seated at a table with a cell phone in his hand

Figure 4: Eric Garner, father, grandfather, husband, and friend. Photo from ABC News.

It is human nature to be accepting of things that one understands and repel the things that do not seem to make sense, people that are different, the so-called “others” (Zevallos 2011). Europeans essentialized African people as the violent and dangerous “other” because of the differences they perceived as well as economic interest and political control that fueled colonization. As African countries gained independence or as slaves were freed, the ideas that Europeans and Euro-Americans painted about African natives, as well as their descendants, did not diminish and still remain with us today. The level of damage done can only be resolved through willing education that disproves centuries-old ideologies. One important thing to learn from historic maps of Africa and recent acts of violence against African Americans is that a single individual, incident, or detail does not give an accurate depiction of entire groups of people.

Bibliography

Delaney, Ted. 2021. “Benga, Ota (ca. 1883-1916).” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virgina Humanities. Accessed on November 26, 2021. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/benga-ota-ca-1883-1916/

Jacobs, Tom. 2018. “Studies Expose ‘Apelike’ Stereotype Among Whites.” Pacific Standard (Jun 1, 2018). https://psmag.com/social-justice/studies-expose-apelike-stereotype-among-whites-20708

Murray, Ken, Kerry Burke, Chelsia Rose marcius, and Rocco Parascandola. 2014. “Staten Island man dies after NYPD cop puts him in a chokehold – SEE THE VIDEO.” Daily News (Dec 3, 2014). https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/staten-island-man-dies-puts-choke-hold-article-1.1871486

National Museum of African Art (Smithsonian Institution). 2002. “Reliquary Guardian Figure.” Exhibition website for “A Personal Journey: Central African Art from the Lawrence Gussman Collection.” Accessed on November 26, 2021. https://africa.si.edu/exhibits/journey/guardian.html

Putnam, Walter. 2012. “’Please don’t feed the natives’: Human Zoos, Colonial Desire, and Bodies on Display.” In The Environment in French and Francophone Literature and Film, edited by Jeff Persels, pg. 55-68. Amsterdam: French Literature Series. https://brill.com/view/book/9789401208840/B9789401208840-s005.xml

Rogers, Kara (and The Editors of Encyclopedia Breitannica). “Phrenology.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed on November 26, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/topic/phrenology.

Zevallos, Zuleyka. 2011. “What is Otherness?” The Other Sociologist. Accessed November 26, 2021. https://othersociologist.com/otherness-resources/

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