![]() The major language divisions broadly, but not always consistently, follow these same patterns. The savanna and tropical rain forest that dominate the tropical regions require different cropping patterns than the temperate zones and are generally less secure environments for the support of large populations. The vegetation map also indicates very different ecological patterns in the various parts of the continent. The Sahara desert is also a barrier to land travel, although one that was breached (while far from eliminated) around 1 CE by the introduction of camels into the region. Thus limits of water transportation-the most efficient means of long-distance carriage prior to the Industrial Revolution-left sub-Saharan Africa relatively isolated from the rest of the Old World and even internally divided for most of its history. Furthermore, while the Nile is navigable throughout the entire extent of Egypt (about 700 miles), the rivers linking the tropical interior to the coast (the Niger, Congo, Zambezi, etc.) are widely separated from one another and generally navigable less than 100 miles inland, where all of them encounter cataracts, due to abrupt rises in land elevation. Moreover, their coastlines have relatively few indentations, meaning that most of the inhabited areas are also far from any coast compare this to profiles of Europe and the Middle East. However, the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts-especially the former-are quite distant from other major land masses. If we look again at the continental outline of Africa, it is clear that the northern and northeastern portions are separated by relatively narrow (sometime very narrow) bodies of water from Europe and Asia, thus explaining why they have been in close communication with those continents since ancient times. ![]() Such distinctions are not politically acceptable in present-day Africa (the Organization of African Unity includes states from all portions of the continent) but maps can help us decide whether they have any geographical and historical justification. Another division distinguishes tropical and temperate zones, with the latter category including not only the Maghreb but also South Africa, whose relative hospitality to European settlement is thus explained. There is, however, a geographic convention of dividing Africa into Mediterranean and sub-Saharan zones, with the former treated as an extension of the Middle East ("Maghreb" the Arabic term for North Africa means "West") while the latter is the "true" Africa. In its most basic cartographic representation, Africa is a well-defined geometric entity: a continent surrounded by natural bodies of water on all sides except for a small isthmus in the extreme northeast joining it to western Asia (and even this is now broken by the Suez Canal). Continent/regions: Geometry and geography More specifically, maps can help us understand three major issues in the history of Africa: first, the physical and ecological factors which define this continent both internally and in relationship to the outside world secondly, indigenous representations of space in the precolonial era, which provide a basis for putting more recent Western cartography into perspective and, finally, colonial boundaries, which represent both European interventions in Africa and the continuing cartography of postcolonial development. Nonetheless, cartography is essential to grasping both the forces within Africa and the constraints-both natural and political-which continue to place this region at a disadvantage in the global order. Once African Studies came into maturity as a study of developments within indigenous societies and cultures, there was an understandable hostility to maps as external impositions. If it appeared at all in studies of history or politics, the central issue was colonialism, which again involved maps of the boundaries which European powers had drawn between the territories they carved out for themselves. Back in my school days during the 1940s and 1950s, the continent was studied only in geography classes. Austenįrica is perhaps the most "mapped" of the world's major regions. Mapping Africa: Problems of Regional Definition and Colonial/National Boundaries by Ralph A.
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