ABSTRACT
By the middle of the sixteenth century, Europeans had made themselves aware of the broad outlines of the Continents of Asia, Africa and America. Both contemporary writers and later authorities exaggerated the physical difficulties that Africa presented; but there was another, and more potent, form of obstruction to be overcome, the unwillingness of African societies to allow Europeans to travel freely in their midst. In age international rivalry was to lead the European powers with an interest in Africa to sponsor many expeditions into the interior with the aim of securing political advantage. In cartography, the great French master, J. B. D’Anville, with his sharply critical mind, was setting a new standard of excellence; his maps of Africa made provocatively clear the full extent of Europe’s ignorance. The liberal and humane ideas conflicted with the status of permanent servitude to which Africans seemed irrevocably doomed in European-dominated society.
