Antique Map of French Algeria, Algiers and Abd el-Kader, circa 1860

About this sheet

A map of French Algeria from the colonial section of the atlas, running from the Mediterranean coast at Cherchell and Algiers south across the Atlas to the edge of the Sahara, with Constantine to the east and the regency of Tunis beyond it. The territory of colonisation is marked out and a panel on the sheet explains a number of Arabic words to the French reader, which tells you a good deal about the intended audience. An engraved portrait of Abd el-Kader, the emir who led the resistance to the French conquest for fifteen years and who was still alive when the plate was printed, is set beside the map, as is a vignette of the dey of Algiers. A document of French colonial ambition, offered as a historical record of the period that produced it.

La France, Nouvel Atlas Illustre des Departements et des Colonies was drawn by Alexandre Vuillemin, ingenieur geographe, and published in Paris by Migeon at 9 rue de la Vieille Monnaie. Vuillemin built each sheet from the official surveys, the Cassini maps, the Depot de la Guerre, the Ponts et Chaussees and the charts of the Marine, and then framed the map with engraved vignettes: a portrait of a figure born in the department, a view of a monument or a ruin, a coat of arms. The result is part atlas and part popular encyclopaedia, and it remains one of the most decorative French departmental series of the nineteenth century.

The plates in this copy show France divided into eighty six departments and the county of Nice still outside the frontier, so the engraving was completed before the annexation of Savoy and Nice in 1860, although Migeon went on issuing the atlas for many years afterwards. The sheets suit a French interior particularly well, and a group of neighbouring departments hung together makes an attractive run.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning and a few small spots confined to the margins; the image itself is clean.

This is an original antique map, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.