CULTURETECHLENSLiberia, West Africa — the colonization map, c. 1830s
The American Colonization Society’s Liberia: the map G. F. Nesbitt & Co. printed in New York in the 1830s, showing the coastal settlements of the colony Black American emigrants both joined and contested.
Publisher: G. F. Nesbitt & Company, New York — the American Colonization Society’s printer (per LOC)
Date: c. 1830s
Held at: Library of Congress — loc.gov/item/96684983
Image: Web copy on this page, 2,000 px wide; full LOC scan 4,944 × 3,488 px at the item record
Rights: Public domain (c. 1830s); LOC records no restriction
How to read these maps: the Atlas Source maps are European commercial cartography of their centuries — primary evidence of the European gaze as much as of African geography, with period place-names and colonial framings intact. None is African-produced; pre-colonial African cartography survives in other forms and other repositories, and that absence is part of the record.
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