African Exploration: European Exploration Of The Incredible African Continent

African Exploration Of Europeans

African Exploration: Between roughly 1770 and 1880, Africa was explored, allowing for precise maps and publishable knowledge on the continent. Although Portuguese navigators had surveyed the beaches by 1500, the interior remained virtually unknown to Europeans until the late eighteenth century. Maps based on classical, Arab, or Portuguese knowledge were accessible earlier, but the famous French cartographer D’Anville dismissed them in 1749. 

Serious exploration entailed a few private adventurers, rarely traders, more commonly Christian missionaries, and, most importantly, official or quasi-official expeditions, often conducted by military personnel. Malaria, river rapids, and occasionally hostile locals necessitated pretty well-organized efforts. Geographic groups, particularly the Royal Geographical Society of London (RGS), missionary societies, and governments, professed to be driven by science or religion with no political agenda until the 1870s.

Nonetheless, explorers directly or indirectly assisted those who desired to transform Africa by obtaining its resources or access to its markets, abolishing the slave trade, or introducing the gospel. The explorers answered by depicting a continent in need of Europe’s knowledge, technology, and moral superiority, regardless of whether this meant political change. Africans themselves facilitated the expeditions by serving as porters, interpreters, and guides. 

The existing local political climate determined the reception of explorers. From 1768 to 1773, Scottish landowner James Bruce traveled to Ethiopia and observed the Blue Nile’s source. In 1788, a group of aristocrats formed the African Association to achieve for Africa what Captain Cook had done for the Pacific. The kingdoms of Western Sudan piqued people’s interest, since reports of their richness and magnificence had long spread throughout Europe. 

This area received water from the Niger River. It wasn’t clear if it went west to the Atlantic, east to the Nile, or into the desert sand. The association’s initial excursions followed Saharan trade routes from the Mediterranean, with Friedrich Konrad Hornemann, the first German explorer of Africa, reaching Bornu before dying in 1800. The alternative starting point was the Atlantic coast, where Mungo Park, a young Scottish surgeon and Enlightenment child, reached the Niger in 1796, “glittering to the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster and flowing slowly eastward.”

A government, concerned with preventing French activity and aiding in the search for markets, sent Park back in 1805 to determine its actual flow. He died in 1806 at Bussa, far down the river, but his whereabouts remained unknown for many years. René Caillé began a lengthy French engagement with the western half of the region in 1827, when he arrived in Timbuktu, a mysterious city to Europeans. 

Meanwhile, British expeditions from the Mediterranean advanced into the center of the Niger; Hugh Clapperton captured Sokoto but not the river in 1824. He perished on the return journey, but in 1830, his former servant, Richard Lander, demonstrated that the Niger had debouched into the Gulf of Guinea. Attempts were made to send steamboats up the river, and Heinrich Barth, a British-funded German, finished his investigation of the Sudanic kingdoms in the early 1850s. 

In South Africa, Afrikaaner farmers from the Cape gradually settled along the south and east coasts, while travelers such as Gordon, Paterson, Burchell, and the missionary Robert Moffat reached Botswana by the 1840s. David Livingstone, Moffat’s son-in-law, visited the Zambesi in 1851. 

Livingstone became convinced that he needed to open up a new channel to the interior for business and the gospel; the Zambesi appeared to be the solution. He arrived on the west coast at Luanda in 1854 and, in his greatest achievement, crossed the continent to the mouth of the Zambezi in 1856, stopping at the Victoria Falls along the way. 

Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches, published in 1857, became one of the century’s best sellers, combining good science, exciting adventures, exotic scenes, and a powerful moral message. The Zambesi, like the Niger, did not provide an accessible route inland for steamboats, as Livingstone discovered between 1858 and 1864 when the government sent him to lead an expedition to follow up on his ideas, much to the dismay of the Portuguese, who had already penetrated the region north of the Zambesi with Dr. Lacerda (in 1798) and Majors Monteiro and Gamitto (in the 1830s). 

Although Livingstone arrived near Lake Malawi in 1859, his steamer was unable to reach it or travel far up the Zambezi. Meanwhile, rumors of other lakes further north, as well as news of snow-covered mountains seen by German Lutheran missionaries Johann Ludwig Krapf and Rebmann of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS), sparked widespread interest, not least because the source of the Nile was assumed to be somewhere in the region. In 1858, the Royal Geographical Society sent Richard Burton and John Speke from the east coast to explore Lake Tanganyika. 

Speke turned north to find Lake Victoria, which he said was the source of the Nile river. He proved this in July 1862, after which he followed the river down to Egypt. Samuel Baker reached Lake Albert in 1864. However, he accidentally killed himself before a scheduled discussion with Burton. There were doubts about Speke’s Nile claims, which remained unresolved in 1873 when Livingstone passed away. The public portrayed him as a martyr to the slave trade, despite his desire to travel further south. He was at the Congo River’s source. 

Verney Cameron, assigned to find Livingstone, discovered his body but continued on to cross the Congo basin in 1874-1876. Henry Stanley, who became famous after discovering Livingstone in October 1871, solved the remaining problems between 1874 and 1877. After confirming Speke’s Nile source, he followed the Zaïre to the Atlantic. Stanley was well-funded, vicious, and efficient. In the early 1880s, the milder Joseph Thomson traveled peacefully in Kenya. Now, efforts were underway to carry on the explorers’ work.

Following the Mahdist insurrection, Egypt attempted to establish an empire on the Upper Nile, leaving Emin Pasha stranded there. In 1886-1890, Stanley led an international expedition up the Zaïre and through the forest to “rescue” Emin Pasha, which had a significant impact on Belgian King Leopold. Stanley added the Ruwenzori range and other new features to the map, primarily as an imperialist venture amid the growing conflict between Belgian, British, and German interests.

Even indirectly, the explorers influenced events and attitudes as Africans grappled with advancing Western civilization. In general, popular descriptions of explorers’ and missionaries’ exploits tended to underestimate the challenges of introducing European technology and trade while disregarding or overlooking the interests and abilities of the people they encountered.

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