Olfert Dapper (January 1636 – 29 December 1689) was a Dutch physician and writer who wrote books about world history and geography although he never travelled outside the Netherlands.

Biography

Olfert Dapper was born in January 1636 in the Jordaan in Amsterdam. On 6 January 1636, he was baptized in the Lutheran church in Amsterdam. In 1663 wrote a book on the history of Amsterdam. His Description of Africa (1668) is a key text for African studies. His book "is one of the most authoritative 17th-century accounts on Africa published in Dutch. Translations appeared in English, French, and German. Dapper never travelled outside the Netherlands but used reports by Jesuit missionaries and Dutch explorers. Within a few years, he published about China, India, Persia, Georgia and Arabia. His books became well-known in his own time. The fine plates include views of Algiers, Benin, Cairo, Cape Town, Valletta, Marrakesh, St. Helena, Tangier, Tripoli and Tunis, as well as animals and plants. Dapper was buried on 29 December 1689 in Amsterdam.

Influence

Dapper's book Description of Africa is an important text for Africanists. In Amsterdam, the street Dapperstraat was named after him. The Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans wrote a book on him with the title Het Evangelie van O. Dapper Dapper (1973). In Paris, the Musée Dapper named for him opened in 1986. Peter S. Beagle dedicated The Last Unicorn to Dapper for his reports of unicorns in Maine and in 2012 wrote a fictional account of Dapper's travels.