Labat, Jean-Baptiste

Forts, anchorages and trading stations on the West African coast fill these maps by Jean-Baptiste Labat, taken from Astley’s...

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Forts, anchorages and trading stations on the West African coast fill these maps by Jean-Baptiste Labat, taken from Astley’s travel compilation and dated 1745. Labat, a French Dominican who lived from 1663 to 1738, wrote about places he had visited and also compiled other travellers’ accounts, so the maps should not be taken as surveys he made of every place in person. They cover the coast around Cape Blanco, Arguin and Portendic in present-day Mauritania and run towards the Senegal River, with plans that close in on individual stations. Prints add Gorée and a Senegalese ceremony, seen through the eyes and vocabulary of European colonial trade.

Forts, anchorages and trading stations on the West African coast fill these maps by Jean-Baptiste Labat, taken from Astley’s travel compilation and dated 1745. Labat, a French Dominican who lived from 1663 to 1738, wrote about places he had visited and also compiled other travellers’ accounts, so the maps should not be taken as surveys he made of every place in person. They cover the coast around Cape Blanco, Arguin and Portendic in present-day Mauritania and run towards the Senegal River, with plans that close in on individual stations. Prints add Gorée and a Senegalese ceremony, seen through the eyes and vocabulary of European colonial trade.

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