The City of Loango
This engraving depicted the port of Loango along the Loango Coast, including a king's palace, wives' residences, wine house, banquet house and gardens. Some prisoners were about to be executed in the lower righthand corner. Thomas Astley (d. 1759) was a British bookseller and publisher who never went to Africa. His imagined localities and illustrations of Africa were informed by a library of travel books at his disposal. Astley took this image from the work of Olfert Dapper (1636–1689), who was a Dutch physician and writer. He wrote about world history and geography, although he never travelled outside the Netherlands. In an informed discussion of Dapper as an historical source, Adam Jones explains how there is virtually no evidence that "Dapper took much interest in what sort of visual material was to accompany his text, and that it was the publisher, Van Meurs, who probably did all the engraving himself." Even those these images have been used as historical evidence in modern works, Jones concludes that "few of the plates showing human beings and artefacts are of any value. . . [and] originated solely from Van Meurs' imagination” (see "Decompiling Dapper: A Preliminary Search for Evidence," History in Africa 17 (1990): p. 187-190).
Image Title
The City of Loango
RegID
SI-OB-828
Date
1745-1747
Title
The City of Loango
Source
"Plate XVII" in Thomas Astley (ed.), A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. 3 (London: Thomas Astley, 1745-1747) facing p. 215.
Language
English
Item sets
Pre-Colonial Africa: Society, Polity, Culture
Spatial Coverage
Africa--West Central North--Loango
Reproduced In
Derived from Olfert Dapper, Description de l'Afrique. . . Avec des cartes & des figures en taille-douce. . . Traduite du Flamand, 1st ed. (Amsterdam: Wolfgang & Co., 1686), between pp. 320 and 321.
Researchers
Jerome Handler; Michael Tuite; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
Last Updated
27-Jan-11; 26-Aug-19
Identifier
Astley020