Carte de la Coste Orientale d’Afrique…

Title

Carte de la Coste Orientale d’Afrique…

Description

Map shows total Somalia, Kenia and Tansania with Sansiba, Tanga, Mombaza, Mogadishu etc.m and a decorative title vartouche.

ca. 1758

Artist

Bellin (1703-1772)

Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703 Paris -1772 Versailles) was a French cartographer, engineer-geographer, marine hydrographer. As a contributor to the Encyclopédie, he wrote more than a thousand articles on maritime topics. As a cartographer, Bellin distinguished himself primarily in the field of sea cartography. From 1721 he worked for the Dépot des Cartes et Plans de la Marine, from 1741 until his death as an engineer-hydrograph of the Navy. In 1753 his atlas Neptune français, which covered all the coasts of France, was published, and in 1756 the hydrography françoise covering all seas of the earth. In 1764 the five-volume Petit Atlas maritime was published, which Bellin prepared on the orders of the Minister of the Navy, Choiseul. In addition, he wrote a number of geographical works and with Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre la geographie (1769) a geographic textbook for teaching. His maps illustrated, among other things, Bougainville's work Voyage autour du monde, published in 1771. As a co-author of the Encyclopédie edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, Bellin wrote more than a thousand articles in the field of shipping and navy.

Historical Description

The ancestors of the Somali migrated around 500 BC. BC to 100 AD from the southern Ethiopian highlands and mixed - especially in the trading cities on the coast, such as Zeila, Hobyo and Mogadishu - with Arab and Persian immigrants, who also introduced Islam from the 7th century. Muslim sultanates and city-states emerged. In the 16th century, the cities on the north coast came under Turkish and Egyptian rule, those on the southern Benadir coast came under the sovereignty of Oman in the 17th century and Zanzibar in the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century, the area inhabited by Somali experienced its subdivision that is still effective today. The north of what is now Somalia was colonized by Great Britain as British Somaliland, the south and east as Italian Somaliland by Italy. On July 1, 1960, the two colonies jointly became independent as Somalia. The country's first president was Aden Abdullah Osman Daar, followed in 1967 by Abdirashid Ali Shermarke.