A False Emptiness: How Historians May Have Been Misled by Early Nineteenth Century Maps of South‐eastern Africa
A False Emptiness: How Historians May Have Been Misled by Early Nineteenth Century Maps of South‐eastern Africa
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虚假的空虚：历史学家可能如何被十九世纪早期的东南非洲地图误导
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发表时间：
2004
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通讯作者：
N. Etherington
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作者：
N. Etherington
关于1820年至1835年期间东南非洲部分地区人口减少的长期历史争论很可能受到1850年前地图的影响，这些地图在对内部进行科学调查之前出版。早期地图上的地理和人口信息大多来自传教士和临时旅行者的描述，而不是调查。这几年制作的所有地图似乎都有一个重大错误，即林波波河水系的源头被显示为比实际位置高出约130至150公里。其结果是，有大量非洲酋长和数万人的领土被割去。布尔人继续他们的伟大跋涉到南非高原，英国官员制定政策和后来的历史学家似乎都作出了错误的估计，根据这些地图。对世纪早期地图的研究也可以揭示最近关于南非的mfecane和印度洋奴隶贸易对高地非洲人的影响的历史争议。
Long‐standing historical debates on the alleged depopulation of parts of south‐eastern Africa in the period between 1820 and 1835 may well have been affected by the use of pre‐1850 maps, published before scientific surveys of the interior had been conducted. Much of the geographical and demographic information inscribed on the early maps was obtained from accounts of missionaries and casual travellers rather than from surveys. All the maps produced during those years appear to share a significant mistake by which the headwaters of the Limpopo River system are shown as rising about 130 to 150 kilometres east of where they ought to be. The result was the excision of territory containing significant African chiefdoms and tens of thousands of people. Boers proceeding on their Great Trek on to the South African highveld, British officials making policy and later historians appear to have made miscalculations based on these maps. Study of the early nineteenth‐century maps can also shed light on recent historical controversies about South Africa's mfecane and the impact of the Indian Ocean slave trade on Africans of the highveld.