Friedrich Jeppe: Mapping the Transvaal c. 1850–1899

This article is an attempt to identify and discuss some of the maps and mapmakers in the late nineteenth-century Transvaal at a time when nascent colonial ‘nationalities’ and sub-imperialisms were in the process of delineation. In the historical circumstances of the region in that era, with the uncertain hegemony of the Transvaal Boers and other polities, both local and international, over the geographical space between the Vaal and Limpopo rivers and beyond to the north, mapping played an important part in negotiations over colonial conquest. With an emphasis on the career of Friedrich Jeppe, and in the context of a number of map makers of his time, the article argues that cartography – as promoted in Europe through the publications of geographical societies – was a visible way of securing settler domination and providing conceptual reality in advancing the formation of the South African Republic as a modern nation-state. Moreover, given the rivalry in the region between the Boer Republics and the British colonies, two streams of cartographical capacity and audience can be discerned. One can be broadly defined as ‘British’, located in the Cape Colony and Natal, and the other was an alternative from Germany that was promoted north of the Vaal River. That Jeppe introduced a German scientific cartograph ical perspective in mapping the Transvaal is further explored here.