Born 1742-Died 1830: Regarded as the “highest authority in Europe” in respect to cartography.[1] During his life, he mapped the travels of Mungo Park, writing the appendix to Park’s Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa.[2] As a cartographer, Rennell was concerned with the inaccuracies of details in the early 18th century maps of Africa. Rennell’s goals were to create accurate maps with concrete details, while establishing cartographic authority for himself in the eyes of the African Association, “the African Association also felt that it was the great failing of the Age of Enlightenment that…the geography of the Dark Continent remain almost unchartered.”[3] Rennell’s “method of critical compilation” eventually led to him publishing A Map Shewing the Progress of Discovery and Improvement in the Geography of North Africa (1798).[4] This map showed the progress in the cartography of Africa, as more silences appeared, and concrete details of maps became reliable and objective source.
[1] Thomas J. Bassett and Philip W. Porter, “From the Best Authorities’: The Mountains of Kong in the Cartography of West Africa.” Journal of African History, 32, no. 3 (1991): 377.
[2] James Rennell, appendix to Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa by Mungo Park, (Durham: Duke University Press 2000), 319-396.
[3] The Great African Expedition: A 21st Century Ethnographical Field Research of Africa. Julian Monroe Fisher. http://www.julianmonroefisher.com/greatafrica/.
[4] Thomas J. Bassett and Philip W. Porter, “From the Best Authorities’: The Mountains of Kong in the Cartography of West Africa.” Journal of African History, 32, no. 3 (1991): 368.
