Cartographic Sources and Territorial Transformations of Ethiopia since the Late 18th Century – ETHIOMAP

For each map of the corpus, all written information is indexed on a database and described according to categories specific to the document’s graphic structure. The user can generate custom lists of items through filters (alphabetically, by zone, by category). Each item is clickable and displays its position on the map. In order to explore the whole collection, all indexed items are gathered into a common general thesaurus of reference transcriptions. Each reference entry of this thesaurus opens to a list of the different maps in which a single place–name can be found with its different spellings. In addition to this work on historical documents, ethnographic field surveys are also planned in order to compare the local knowledge that was recorded on maps in the past, with the current knowledge that can now be collected from inhabitants of the same territories.

To date, 17 maps have been scanned and indexed, totaling more than 12,000 items recorded. The first results of the project were presented at the 27th International Conference on the History of Cartography, held at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in July 2017

The organization of an international workshop in Gotha from October 25 to 27, 2017, will bring together and discuss the first contributions to the collective volume that will result from the project. Ethnographic field surveys will take place during the year 2018.

see the project website: ethiomap.huma-num.fr

Our knowledge of the geography of Ethiopia is marked by especially rich and ancient political and cultural history, ethnic diversity and a very rich corpus of historical and cultural source material. These include centuries-old local written works and oral traditions in the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia and neighboring Muslim polities. From the 19th century, the production of academic knowledge on Ethiopia and other territories of northeastern Africa include many maps and topographic information produced by foreign researchers and co-produced by anonymous local informants, such as traditional scholars, merchants and office holders of Christian Ethiopia and even in some cases of several neighboring kingdoms, disappeared today. However, the absence of compendium of maps has led to a fundamental ignorance of their potential resources of information for studies of the country and its region.

The members of the French-German team, in close association with Ethiopian partners, have accumulated a lot of experience in fieldwork research in central or peripheral areas of the modern state structures, combined with many years of work in archives and extensive teaching experience in Ethiopian universities. Their common observation is that there is an urgent need for a geo-historical instrument and reference work which can help to study and understand the meaning of maps: the epistemic operations behind the inscription of toponyms and ethnonyms; the evolution of spatial representations; the roots of territorial claims; the sustainability of collective memory; and the power of social imaginations to adapt to changing landscapes.

We believe that this research will result in invaluable tools for accessing to the information contained in historical maps and for taking into consideration in other fields of study the evolution of map-making technologies which have shaped the representations of space that are still fundamental in the current social and political activities involving territorial issues.

The objectives of the ETHIOMAP project are twofold:

1. Collection, critical analysis and indexation of historical cartographic sources: The project will collect, critically describe, analyze, index and publish a documentation of widely unknown, but historically important maps of Ethiopia and neighboring countries of northeastern Africa. The scope of the research is limited to maps that were designed between 1790 and 1944, each of them representing a specific historical period and constituting excellent ethnographic or historical sources that have been neglected by the general trend of studies on this area of the world.

A selection of 25 maps will be fully indexed and made accessible through an on-line map-viewer application. This will be linked to a scholarly blog of the project through which short critical notes presenting the maps of the corpus will be published as the research advances. More elaborated articles will be proposed to international journals. Other dissemination activities will include seminars in Ethiopian universities to advertise the outcome of the project to the local communities of researchers.

2. focused fieldwork surveys: This work on historical cartographic and topographic sources will be supplemented by targeted fieldwork investigations on contemporary territories. Selected areas of the most informative maps of the corpus will be compared to the corresponding territories in current-day Ethiopia. Through four focused surveys, we first expect to reach a better understanding of the work of map-makers by returning on their footsteps and by experimenting the current conditions of collecting spatial information from local populations. Direct observation of places and landscapes cannot be substituted by the available cartographic materials and new technologies. The other objective of these surveys is to describe processes of continuity and transformations in spatial organizations, by collecting information on local realities.