Map of Africa from the rare “Atlas of Modern Geography for Use in the Secondary Schools of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia,” edited by the geographer and astronomer Giovanni Marieni and published in Milan in 1833 by the Imperial Royal Printing Office.
The map shows an extremely detailed and accurate coastline, the result of centuries of navigation, contrasted with an interior depicted with broken lines:
North Africa: The Mediterranean coast is divided into well-known historical entities. We find Morocco (or the “Empire of Morocco”), and the Ottoman regencies of Algiers (precisely during the years when France began its conquest, launched in 1830), Tunis, Tripoli, and Barca (present-day Libya). Egypt and Nubia occupy the northeastern quadrant, territories that, under the leadership of Mehmet Ali, were undergoing rapid modernization.
The Sub-Saharan Belt (Historical Sudan): Below the “Sahara or Great Desert,” the atlas identifies the macro-region of Sudan (understood in the historical Arabic sense of Bilad al-Sudan, “land of the blacks”), which extends from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Here, indigenous kingdoms and empires such as the Borgu, Bornu, Baghermi, Darfur, and Kordofan are noted.
The West and Guinea: The western coast features the traditional European commercial and ethnic subdivisions: Senegambia and the division of Guinea into Upper and Lower Guinea, with historical inland kingdoms such as the Ashanti and Dahomey.
The East and the Ethiopian Empire: The present-day Horn of Africa is dominated by Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and the Kingdom of Adel (or Ajan), while further south lie the territories of Zanguebar (Zanzibar and the Swahili coast) and the Kingdom of Monomotapa (an ancient empire of southern Africa, still depicted here based on 18th-century cartography).
The Vast Unexplored Areas
The “Unknown Regions”: A vast portion of central and south-central Africa is explicitly labeled “Unknown Regions.” The entire area that today encompasses the Congo Basin, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, the Central African Republic, and part of East Africa is a blank slate. The great African lakes (Victoria, Tanganyika, Malawi) have not yet been discovered by Europeans and are completely absent.
The Mystery of the Sources of the Nile and the Niger: The course of the Niger River is still depicted as uncertain in the interior, although the voyages of Mungo Park and the Lander brothers had recently (1830) clarified its mouth in the Gulf of Guinea. The sources of the Nile remain an unsolved mystery: the map shows the Blue Nile and the White Nile abruptly ending or arising from hypothetical mountain ranges (a legacy of Ptolemy’s Mountains of the Moon, here hinted at or generically positioned as the “Mountains of Kong” or “Mountains of the Moon” to demarcate the desert from Sudan).
Hydrography and Hypothetical Place Names: Central and Southern Italy feature rivers that originate on the coast and quickly dry up inland, as well as hypothetical mountain ranges that serve as ideal watersheds, reflecting a geographical understanding based almost exclusively on accounts from Arab merchants or the African coast.
The history of the Imperiale Regia Stamperia di Milano is closely linked to the Austrian presence in Lombardy. Founded in 1761 by order of Maria Theresa of Austria, the Imperiale Regia Stamperia di Milano represented the state’s typographic excellence for nearly a century. During the Habsburg period, the printing house served as the official body responsible for publishing laws, edicts, and school textbooks approved by the Austrian government. Thanks to its collaboration with technicians, engravers, and geographers affiliated with imperial scientific institutions, the printing house contributed to the dissemination of publications of high typographical and scientific quality. With the Five Days of Milan and the subsequent Risorgimento uprisings, the printing house lost its “imperial” character, gradually transforming into Stamperia Reale after the unification of Italy.
