The post-colonial map collection of the Royal Tropical Institute largely consists of modern topographical and thematical maps and town plans of developing countries, i.e. countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The core of the collection is formed by twentieth century topographical map series of Latin American, African and Asian countries, normally on a scale of 1:250,000 but, especially for smaller countries, on larger scales as well. Many of these series don’t cover the complete territory of a country. The map series weren’t always finished at the time they were collected.

Next to these topographical map series are smaller scale series of maps that cover larger regions or (parts of) continents. Apart from general maps and topographical map series, the collection contains various thematical maps and map series, among which geological, hydrographical, agricultural, meteorological, demographical, ethnological, linguisitcal, infrastructural and touristical maps, as well as town plans, national atlases and world maps.

Geographically, about 35% of the collection concerns maps of countries in Africa, 35% Asia and 20% Latin America. The other 10% of the collection contain maps of the world, Europe, Australia, Oceania, the oceans, seas, poles and heavens.