60 ]EFFREY C. STONEprimarily that where they existed, they were fullyemployed in the pressing task which also derivedfrom the imposition of colonial authority butnecessitated a high order of professional expertise,namely cadastral mapping for the purposes of demarcatingtownships <strong>and</strong> building plots, roads, railways,
alienated l<strong>and</strong>, reserved l<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> all of the otherboundaries that were a part of colonial imposition.The importance of this second type of colonial mapwhich was a product of the change from imperial tocolonial control, IS evident from the necessity forColonial Surveys to resort to unsophisticated compilationtechniques in publishing early topographicseries (Stone, 1984), sometimes employing theamateur work of the District Officer (Fig. 2). Overall,progress on the provision of large scale topographicmap cover in British colonial Africa was slow. Thereason why the Federal Surveys of Rhodesia <strong>and</strong>Nyasal<strong>and</strong> was able to publish such a large number oflarge-scale topographic sheets of Northern <strong>and</strong>Southern Rhodesia during its short life span from1956 to 1964, was in part the paucity of coverageachieved in the previous half century of colonial rule.However, the association of colonial map makingwith cadastral surveys at the expense of topographicsurvey, is nowhere better demonstrated than in SouthAfrica. The method which Potter established in 1657to record rights in l<strong>and</strong> at the Cape (Fisher, 1984,p. 58) IS still in use today, but the country madelittle progress towards the provision of adequatetopographic cover until the reorganization of theTrigonometrical Survey Office in 1936 (Liebenberg,1979), long after the end of colonial rule.A further differentiating factor between imperialism<strong>and</strong> <strong>colonialism</strong> which is supported by the cartographicevidence, is the removal of the internationaldimension with the imposition of colonial rule. This isrecognized, for example, by McGrath (1976), whosestudy of British East Africa specifically excludes theGerman contribution to the mapping of its formerterritory. The nationalistic parochialism of the colonialperiod was carried to its ultimate in the decentralizedadministrative system of former British Africa inwhich territories were treated as separate <strong>and</strong> selfcontainedunits (Jeffries, 1956). In consequence, thereis great variation between the former British territoriesas to the amount <strong>and</strong> type of topographic mappingwhich was carried out. For example, an early start ontopographic survey was made in Ug<strong>and</strong>a by comparisonwith Northern Rhodesia, although Ug<strong>and</strong>a isrenowned for the very early Mailo Survey ofBug<strong>and</strong>a which was an experiment in l<strong>and</strong> settlement<strong>and</strong> exemplifies the pre-eminence of cadastral work inthe colonial period. Each European colonial powerwent its own way in devising, or not devising, itsown programme of surveys <strong>and</strong> each British territorydid likewise.If <strong>colonialism</strong> was a relatively brief aberration in<strong>Imperialism</strong>, <strong>colonialism</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>cartography</strong> 61the prolonged <strong>and</strong> otherwise uninterrupted imperialrelationship between Europe <strong>and</strong> Africa, then sufficienttime should have elapsed by now for evidenceof the traits of imperialism to be reassertingthemselves. Debatably, the evidence is present inthe negotiations between the EEC <strong>and</strong> its AfricanAssociates in the context of the Lomé Conventions.Equally contentiously, there is cartographic evidencederiving from the former Directorate of OverseasSurveys (hereafter DOS), a colonial institution inorigin, which had assumed the broader role of anagency for technical aid to overseas governments. AsMcGrath (1983) demonstrates, there is continuity ofpurpose in the relationship between DOS <strong>and</strong> firstlythe then dependencies of the UK, <strong>and</strong> eventually thenewly independent countries, continuity which wasin part a product of the local autonomy of the formerdependencies. Nevertheless, the changed nature ofthe political relationship did bring about change inthe cartographic product, not unrelated to the reformationof British aid policy after the creation of aMinistry of Overseas Development in 1964. In thepost-independence period, the Directorate has ofcourse been obliged to take account of UK governmentpolicy on aid in project selection. It is in thiscontext that changes in product must be seen, as forexample, in carrying out cadastral survey (once thehallmark of colonial surveys <strong>and</strong> now of the surveysof independent governments), most notably insupport of the scheme to resettle African smallholders on farms purchased from Europeans in theHighl<strong>and</strong>s of Kenya; or in the formation of the L<strong>and</strong>Resources Division of DOS in 1964 to produce arange of maps related to l<strong>and</strong> use: or the successful‘joint projects’ of DOS which were specificallydesigned as vehicles for technology transfer. Then,the extensive programmes of large scale topographicmapping which were mounted by the Directorateof Commonwealth Surveys (DCS) throughout largeparts of former British Africa in the years precedingindependence may be seen to have their origins in thegradual reassertion of imperial policy over colonialpolicy, to meet the needs of post-war Britain forreliable sources of primary products in circumstancesof impending political change in Africa. It was thiswriter’s experience that the colonial administrator onthe ground had little need of the topographic coverwhich latterly became available. The significantfeature is not that one type of map is always to beassociated with <strong>colonialism</strong> or with imperialism,(since neither function is static), but that change incartographic usage will occur in the transition from
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