[Review] Norman Ethertington (2007) Mapping colonial conquest: Australia and Southern Africa

This richly illustrated and beautifully presented book, edited by Norman Etherington, examines cartography and other forms of visual representation as a set of power-laden discourses in the colonial histories of southern Africa and Australia. In a useful if perfunctory introduction, Etherington notes that the cartographic histories of these two regions have received relatively little academic attention, and points to the ways that European colonial mapping exercises tended to erase traces of indigenous societies in the landscape and leave debts to indigenous assistance unacknowledged. While some chapters focus on either Australia or southern Africa alone, others are comparative, and one or two trace direct connections between them.