Visualizing Africa
Book illustration as a means of communication

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, when almost all the corners of the world had already been 'discovered' by white men, Antarctica and the inner parts of Africa still remained unknown. Every time the Europeans tried to solve the 'riddle of Africa', they encountered tropical climate and strange fevers. If they were lucky enough to stay alive, they were often forced to give up the journey and return to the coast. As a result, the information about the interior increased very slowly and the image of Africa as a 'dark' and 'mysterious' continent remained for a long time in Western thinking. The situation changed, however, as many of the obstacles to travel gradually disappeared in the course of the nineteenth century. As a result of the invention of new medicines and new guns, Central Africa became an increasingly popular target for exploration, and, soon after that, for imperialist conquest. Following on these close encounters, a long process of image formation started. During this process, which still continues, the images and ideas of Africa and its inhabitants gradually took shape in Europe as well as those of Europe in Africa.

Simultaneously with the exploration of Africa and the flow of new information, the Europeans experienced a 'visual revolution'. Due to the inventions in printing technology, the printed images began to appear in great amounts in books, journals, pamphlets and advertisements thus changing the everyday environment once and for all. In addition to causing a revolution in communication, the printed images also made it possible to redefine all the things in the world, now in a visual form. Also, in the case of Africa, the pictures had a tremendous impact in creating a notion of the 'newly found' Africa. The impact was increased by the fact that most of the Europeans had never seen a picture of black people, elephants or other astonishing things. The legacy of this impact can still be found everywhere in our modern ways of representing Africa visually.

In my presentation, the shaping of the visual image of Africa will be approached by analysing the process of illustration of travel literature in the latter part of the nineteenth century. At that time, the production of an illustrated book involved various phases and individuals that all had an effect on the resulting image. When planning to publish a travel account, in addition to the diaries and written description, the traveller offered the publisher his sketches, paintings and photographs to be used in illustration. However, none of the pictures could be used as such: in order to be printed they had to be copied by artists and engraved by engravers into wood or redrawn into a lithographic stone by lithographers. These and many other specialists involved in illustration were advised and supervised by the publisher himself or his assistants. The illustration process often included frequent alterations and improvements of the image. In the end, the original picture was turned into a printed image which could be, at best, almost identical with the original. In the worst case, however, the resulting image turned out to be something quite different. The production of an illustrated book was always an active process with an endless amount of choices, coincidences, uncertainties and communication between different people. The 'construction' of a picture included constant balancing between the possibilities and the limitations.

Some elements of this complex process will be presented by focusing on one of the most famous African travel books in the nineteenth century, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone (1857). As a subject of a case study, Missionary Travels proves interesting in many ways. Firstly, more material relating to its illustration survives than in most other contemporary cases. Besides the manuscript material, for example sketches, written descriptions and correspondence, plenty of research material on the Victorian favourite explorer is available. Another interesting issue in Missionary Travels is that the illustrations in it were only partly based on Livingstone's own sketches so that other means had to be found to complement them. In addition, thanks to the wide collection of correspondence, it is possible to trace the role of the publisher John Murray, as well as some of the artists, in illustrating the book.

FL Leila Koivunen
Department of History / General History
University of Turku
20014 Turku, Finland
Tel: +358-2-3336260, +358-40-8208240
Fax: +358-2-3336560
E-mail: leila.koivunen@utu.fi