A Suitable Match: Marrying Technology to the Past in the Thomas Baines and the ‘Great Map’ CD-ROM Project

Abstract

“Thomas Baines and the ‘Great Map’”, a CD-ROM published by Campbell Collections, University of Natal in 2001, is the result of a joint project comprising South African and Australian scholars working on Thomas Baines's “Map of the Gold Fields of South Eastern Africa (1872)”. Baines, the well known artist and explorer who died in Durban, South Africa, in 1875, made two trips to modern day Zimbabwe in search of gold bearing sites for the Natal Land and Colonisation Company. One of the large maps which he drew on this trip is the subject of study for this interdisciplinary team coordinated by Lindy Stiebel (Professor of English Studies, University of Durban-Westville). The other team members are Jane Carruthers (History, University of South Africa), Vivian Forbes (Chief Cartographer, University of Western Australia), Norman Etherington (Professor of History, University of Western Australia) and staff of the Campbell Collections, Durban, South Africa. The CD aims to make Baines's manuscript map of 1872, which is owned by the Campbell Collections, more accessible to scholars and the general public alike. The CD reproduces the map in digital form, plus accompanies the map with three essays that situate the map historically, cartographically and discursively. Four of Baines's paintings relevant to the Gold Fields expedition also appear on the CD. All legible place names on the map have been bookmarked for easy click-and- find access and the accompanying essays extensively hyperlinked. This paper discusses and assesses this pioneering project; plus points the way to other potential projects in which a similar ‘marriage’ of technology to the past can be implemented.