Obarè B. Bagodo, PhD.
Maître de Conférences (Reader/Associate Professor)
Université d’Abomey-Calavi, République du Bénin–Email :
[email protected]

The present review is the third emanated version from two precedent texts more or
less differentiated by the titles and contents. The first text was accepted for the 5th
Congress of the Association of African Historians to be held in Ouagadougou in
November 2011 initially, and postponed sine die finally. The second was presented
at the 13th Conference of the West African Archaeological Association held in
Abidjan in February 2013. However the three texts refer to the same cartographic
problems in both the UNESCO’s and Cambridge’s series.
General History of Africa is the UNESCO’s series. The first eight volumes
are published between 1980 and 1999. The publication of a ninth volume into three
tomes from 2015 onwards is not concerned with the present study. The contents of
the precedent eight volumes are allocated among twenty-eight and thirty chapters,
with editors submitted to the intellectual authority of thirty nine members of an
International Scientific Committee.
The Cambridge History of Africa is the second series, with also eight
volumes. The contents are allocated among nine and thirteen expanded chapters
(e.g. volumes I, II, III, IV and V referred to in the review). The series publication
started earlier in 1975 with volume IV, followed by volumes V (1976), III (1977), II
(1978), and I (1982), under the intellectual authority of volumes’ editors in close
collaboration with two general editors only.
Both in history and archaeology, as well as in geography and geology, the
map consists of not a simple illustrative decoration, but first and foremost of a
visual, active, and powerful enlightenment (Wood and Fels 1992; George et al.
1974). In this regard, the cartographic illustrating of the two series referred to above
shows lax and faulty technical, locational and graphic lacunas. Such problems
persisted up to nowadays because of an accommodating and conniving silence
Abstract
observed by scholars and advertised users. A critical review is then required as a
matter of scientific commitment and professional awareness, for due statement and
expectation of corrections.
For such a review, the methodological approach has selected the Gulf of
Guinea region, in focusing the illustrative review on volumes III, IV, V and VI of
UNESCO’s series, and comparatively on volumes I, II, III, IV and V of Cambridge
University’s series. Critically comparative and mainly centered regionally, the
review reveals more lacunas in the UNESCO’s series. Amongst others, publications
such as Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa (Vogel et al. 1997), with thirty one
maps, and History of West Africa Vol. I. (Ajayi, Crowder et al. 1976), with twentynine
maps, are put aside for a future complementary review.
Taking into consideration the consistence of the problems in the UNESCO’s
series and the mandate of this UN organization to ensure qualified research and
education, the emphasis concludes, accordingly with a precedent call for required
corrections and subsequent revised editions of the height precedent volumes
(Bagodo, 2009a: 10-13), as well as on the benefit for the drafting/editing illustration
of the three tomes of volume IX started since 2015 onwards.