Review: National atlas of Senegal

Summary

Yoro K. Fall reviews the 1977 Atlas national du Sénégal, directed by R. Nguyen Van Chi, praising its multidisciplinary contributions and teamwork while concentrating on historical plates 19–23. These cover ancient Senegambian kingdoms, seventeenth-century Senegambia, resistance to colonial conquest, nineteenth-century European imperial expansion, and kingdoms and territories around the mid-nineteenth century. Fall finds many maps expressive or excellent, but stresses the uncertainty of early political boundaries and criticizes ethnic classifications, migration chronologies, and insufficient critical comparison of archaeology, Arabic sources, and oral traditions. He welcomes the historical maps reproduced in plate 20, while calling for fuller explanations of their production, territorial divisions, the slave trade, and urban planning. He argues that plate 21 exaggerates rulers’ resistance and neglects popular resistance and its internal social conditions. For plate 22, he questions territorial delineation and the treatment of changes in French colonial policy. For plate 23, he praises the map and clear text but criticizes labeling and depictions of sparsely inhabited regions. He concludes that substantial research underlies the plates, but a new edition requires corrections.