Early Cape Travelers

The early colonial Cape of Good Hope was subject to a large number of travel accounts by Europeans, roughly 1488 to 1900. For all the obvious ethnocentrism of their colonial gaze, they are historically valuable in that they contain unique information, including natural history, ethnography and topography. Many of the key texts have been edited with commentary and translation by Historical Publications of South Africa (HiPSA), formerly known as the Van Riebeeck Society; others await high-quality new editions and translations. While the HiPSA volumes typically contain basic maps, the aim of our project is to create high-quality digital maps for as many itineraries as possible. Our team has already developed a prototype on the basis of 1780s travelogues by Hendrik Swellengrebel and Francois le Vaillant, originally written in Dutch and French respectively. We are eager to expand our coverage. Once we have mapped a critical mass of these texts with ArcGIS, we will be able to detect broader geographical patterns beyond any one journey, including the persistence of certain routes over time and divergences therefrom. Furthermore, a fuller cartography of the area will allow comparison with indigenous knowledge systems contained in naming practices, for which considerable toponymic data exists. In this project we'll use English translations of selected travel journals to map and ultimately aggregate their itineraries.