The imprecise but useful map of the mouth of the Senegal River, given to the museum as part of the Morbiato bequest, was drawn by Joseph Lash to provide the English, who had just taken control of the area from the French, with a practical tool for managing the considerable trade taking place there, which moved people and goods across three continents.
Drawn by Lash in around 1765, then engraved on copper by Simpson and water-coloured by hand, it is a sketch of the final stretch of the Senegal River, from the sandbar to the forest basin, an area which, the plate states, was the subject of a detailed survey carried out by the cartographer. Oriented with west at the top, it also shows, along the course of the river on the right, the island of Saint Louis (Ndar in the Wolof language), which had been the location of the first permanent French colony in Senegal from 1659 and has since evolved into the fifth largest city in Senegal, with over 170,000 inhabitants. In time the island established itself as a vital economic centre, mainly thanks to the trade in gum arabic. It was, however, also a crucial node of a violent and cruel form of mobility: it is estimated that, particularly in the eighteenth century, over 10,000 people a year passed through it waiting to be boarded as slaves bound for the Americas.
Very little is known about Joseph Lash, who, apart from creating this large-scale map, in 1765 wrote the related text Directions for Crossing the Bar of the River Senegal. Both works were produced in response to the need for practical information on this area following the English conquest of Saint Louis that had been formalised by the Treaty of Paris (1763). The map is dedicated to Samuel Smith (1727–1798), a London lawyer and merchant who profited greatly from the trade based on the area depicted. Maps in motion thus also reveal the interpersonal relationships that bind their creators to other important figures of the time.
Browse the gallery and discover the details of the map:
