Civitas Loandae S. Pauli

Title

Civitas Loandae S. Pauli

Description

City map of Sao Paulo de Luanda in Angola.

ca. 1649

Artist

Merian (1593-1650)

Matthäus Merian (1593 – 1650) , born in Basel, learned the art of copperplate engraving in Zurich and subsequently worked and studied in Strasbourg, Nancy, and Paris, before returning to Basel in 1615. The following year he moved to Frankfurt, Germany where he worked for the publisher Johann Theodor de Bry. He married his daughter, Maria Magdalena 1617. In 1620 they moved back to Basel, only to return three years later to Frankfurt, where Merian took over the publishing house of his father-in-law after de Bry's death in 1623. In 1626 he became a citizen of Frankfurt and could henceforth work as an independent publisher. He is the father of Maria Sibylla Merian, who later published her the famous and wellknown studies of flowers, insects and butterflies.

Historical Description

Luanda, originally São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda, is the capital of Angola. Luanda is located in the province of Luanda north of the mouth of the Cuanza River into the Atlantic Ocean. Luanda is now one of the largest cities in Africa and is also the third largest Portuguese-speaking city behind São Paulo as well as Rio de Janeiro. In 1575, the Portuguese captain Paulo Dias de Novais landed at Ilha do Cabo with a first group of Portuguese settlers. Since the location of Ilha do Cabo offered unfavorable conditions for defense, the settlers settled on the opposite Morro de São Miguel. This hill had an ideal strategic position and also had sources of water.The city was founded in 1576 as São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda ( Saint Paul of the Assumption to Loanda) It became the center of the Portuguese presence in the territory of present-day Angola in 1627 and retained this function until the end of the colonial period in 1975.The city was also the center of the slave trade to Brazil, the Caribbean and the United States until the second half of the 19th century. After the abolition of slavery in 1836, Luanda suffered an economic and social crisis. Numerous Europeans left the city as a result. The construction of the railroad line to Funda in 1888 brought an economic upswing through the exchange of goods with the hinterland. With the upswing, many Africans now moved to the city and built their traditional mud huts there.