Charte der Südspize von Africa oder des Hottentotten und Caplands

Title

Charte der Südspize von Africa oder des Hottentotten und Caplands

Description

Map shows the south part of South Africa and Capland.

dated 1811

Artist

Reilly (1766-1820)

Franz Johann Joseph von Reilly (1766 - 1820) Vienna. He was an Austrian and produced over 830 maps for his great atlas project, -Schauplatz der funf Theile der Welt- between the years 1789 and 1806. Of these 830 maps published over this time span of seventeen years, he 'showcased' but one part of the world, Europe. Maps of the other four continents remained unpublished. The maps of the Schauplatz ...were drawn to a uniform criteria. Reilly's Grosser deutscher Atlas was also notable as the first completely 'Austrian' atlas. This large world atlas, containing relatively few maps, was issued between 1794 and the end of 1796. Reilly may have used Franz Anton Schraembl's work as his model, at least in part.

Historical Description

Some of the world's oldest paleoanthropological fossils have been unearthed in South Africa. After these pre-humans, various species of the Homo genus such as Homo habilis, Homo naledi, Homo erectus and finally modern man, Homo sapiens, lived here. The beginning of modern historiography in South Africa is set on April 6, 1652, when the Dutchman Jan van Riebeeck built a supply station on the Cape of Good Hope on behalf of the Dutch East India Company (Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC). Due to its strategically favorable location, it was supposed to be a rest stop for merchant ships traveling between Europe and Southeast Asia. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the settlement, which slowly but steadily expanded, was owned by the Netherlands. The settlers initially spread to the western Cape region, which at that time was a retreat for the Khoisan. Several hundred French Huguenots, after being persecuted in France from 1686, came into the country via the Netherlands from 1688 and brought the viticulture culture with them. The French-speaking names of wineries and fruit-growing farms in the western Cape can be traced back to them. After reaching the Bantu settlement border eastwards in 1770, they waged a series of wars - the border wars - against the Xhosa people. The Cape Dutch brought numerous slaves into the country from Indonesia, Madagascar and India.