The Partition of Africa

These maps come from the second edition of J. Scott Keltie’s The Partition of Africa, published in London by Edward...

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These maps come from the second edition of J. Scott Keltie’s The Partition of Africa, published in London by Edward Stanford in 1895. Keltie, then Assistant Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, intended the book to provide a connected account of the rapid division of Africa among European powers. It records the Scramble for Africa as it unfolded through exploration, missionary and commercial penetration, strategic rivalry and competing territorial claims. Central to the sequence are maps showing European possessions in 1884 before the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, the changed position after that conference, and Africa at the close of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference of 1889–90. Together they provide a striking contemporary visual record of progressive colonisation, as coastal footholds and spheres of influence expanded into imperial territories. Published while this transformation was still taking place, the maps reveal how late Victorian Britain understood—and represented—the conquest and partition of the continent.

These maps come from the second edition of J. Scott Keltie’s The Partition of Africa, published in London by Edward Stanford in 1895. Keltie, then Assistant Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, intended the book to provide a connected account of the rapid division of Africa among European powers. It records the Scramble for Africa as it unfolded through exploration, missionary and commercial penetration, strategic rivalry and competing territorial claims. Central to the sequence are maps showing European possessions in 1884 before the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, the changed position after that conference, and Africa at the close of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference of 1889–90. Together they provide a striking contemporary visual record of progressive colonisation, as coastal footholds and spheres of influence expanded into imperial territories. Published while this transformation was still taking place, the maps reveal how late Victorian Britain understood—and represented—the conquest and partition of the continent.

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