Barbaria.

Title

Barbaria.

Description

The upper section of the map depicts North Africa, stretching from Morocco in the west through modern-day Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, all the way to the Nile Delta in Egypt. Below it, the central part of the Barbary Coast (modern-day Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) is shown, featuring a title cartouche as well as sailing ships and animal vignettes.

ca. 1665

Artist

Blaeu Willem Janszoon (1571-1638)

Joan Guilliemus Blaeu was the eldest son of Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), and was probably born in Alkmaar in the province of Noord-Holland in the final years of the 16th century. He was brought up in Amsterdam, and studied law at the University of Leiden before going into partnership with his father in the 1630s. Although his father Willem had cartographic interests, having studied under the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and having manufactured globes and instruments, his primary business was as a printer. It was under the control of Joan that the Blaeu printing press achieved lasting fame by moving towards the printing of maps and expanding to become the largest printing press in Europe in the 17th century. By the 1660s the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (or Atlas Maior as it had became known by this time) had expanded to between 9 and 12 volumes, depending on the language. With over 3,000 text pages and approximately 600 maps, it was the most expensive book money could buy in the later 17th century. The translation of the text from Latin into Dutch, English, German, French, and Spanish for several volumes created enormous work for those involved in typography and letterpress activities. It is estimated that over 80 men must have been employed full-time in the Blaeu printing house in Bloemgracht, not including engravers who worked elsewhere, with over 15 printing presses running simultaneously, and in 1667 a second press was acquired at Gravenstraat. At the same time as producing the Atlas Maior, Blaeu was also publishing town plans of Italy, maps for globes, and other volumes. At its peak the Blaeu press managed to produce over 1 million impressions from 1,000 copper plates within four years.

Historical Description

North Africa in the broader geographical sense is the area of the continent of Africa that includes the Sahara and the coastal strip to the north, west and east of the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Red Sea. Religiously, North Africa is mainly characterized by Islam, ethnically by Berbers, Moors and Arabs, in the southernmost area also Nubians, Amhars and Black Africans. The core states of North Africa include Morocco with the Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia (small Maghreb), Libya (Greater Maghreb), Egypt and Sudan. Especially during the ongoing desert phase, contacts between North and sub-Saharan Africa were therefore limited almost exclusively to trade along the east and west coasts of the continent and to certain routes where there were sufficient water points, due to the difficulties of crossing the world's largest sandy desert. At the same time, this meant ethnic separation, and although North African culture has both African and Middle Eastern roots, with the Berbers possibly even European. With antiquity in the narrower sense, the interests of the Mediterranean peoples, which had previously been focused primarily on Egypt and the Near East in terms of power politics, gradually changed. As so often in history, it was trade that paved new paths; and the first people to devote themselves entirely to Mediterranean trade, even to the neglect of their own state structures, were the Phoenicians, but the place in North Africa where territorial state structures did develop, at least to some extent, was Carthage. In the period between the destruction of Carthage and Rome taking control of the Maghreb, there was a brief flourishing of local kingdoms. Two largely sedentary ethnic groups, the Moors and Numidians, were of particular importance. After the victory over Carthage, Roman culture and, above all, Roman administration spread relatively quickly from east to west along the Atlas mountain ranges across the new territories in North Africa. The North African provinces quickly became economically central to the Roman Empire, and between the 1st and 4th centuries AD, Rome's survival actually depended on grain and olive supplies from there, as the climate in North Africa at that time was wetter than it is today. When the Romans took power in the Mediterranean, a development came to an end in the course of which North Africa in particular finally became part of the Mediterranean world.