1874 Carcereri Map of Khartoum and Environs, White Nile Region

An 1874 map of the White Nile, taking in Khartoum and El-Obeid, drawn by Stanislao Carcereri for Les Missions Catholiques, a missionary publication. It depicts the travels of Carcereri and his fellow Camillian missionaries, who established the first Christian churches in the region.

A Closer Look

Coverage includes a large portion of central Sudan between the White Nile and Darfur. Aside from the Nile, other waterways, mountains and areas of elevation, settlements, and the rough borders of different ethnic groups are noted. The route of Carcereri and his companions is traced in red. 'Cordofan' in the title refers to Kordofan, a historic name for this region, while 'Noubas' is derived from the Nuba peoples, a collection of related ethnic groups in central Sudan, or perhaps the Nuba Mountains of the same region.

Exploring Upper Egypt and the Sudan

Carcereri and his companions set out from Khartoum in October 1871, heading southwest, initially along the White Nile but quickly heading inland towards Darfur, areas hitherto little known to Europeans. In January, they reached El Obeid, an important outpost built by the Egyptians / Ottomans following their conquest of Sudan in the early 1820s. They continued traveling southwest until reaching highlands, beyond which the arid and desert terrain of Sudan transitions to greener vegetation, lands that at the time were even more mysterious to Europeans than Kordofan.

It is worth noting that this map was published in the wake of David Livingstone's explorations of central Africa, and that, like Livingstone, Carcereri was dedicated to using exploration as a means to eradicate the slave trade in eastern Africa. Another fierce opponent of slavery, Charles 'Chinese' Gordon, was in 1873 appointed by the Egyptian khedive as governor of the Equatorial Provinces of Sudan, which included the lands seen here. Gordon angered the Arab slave trading elite of the region, which helped lay the basis for the Mahdist Uprising in 1882. When the Mahdists overran El-Obeid, the mission structures established by Carcereri were abandoned and the city was destroyed by the rebels; both were rebuilt following the collapse of the Mahdists at the end of the 19th century.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by Paolo Stanislao Carcereri and published in Les Missions Catholiques, a missionary publication, in 1874. It was engraved by Frédéric Louis Charles Wuhrer and published by Eugène Dufrenoy. The map is independently cataloged by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, while Les Missions Catholiques is more widely distributed in institutional collections.