Group items tagged

presumably

One of the difficulties facing all those who have written on the subject is that of distinguishing between the traveler to exotic places and the scientificexplorer; naturally, the RGS insisted on its concern with the latter. 9 In practice the distinction was not and is not always easy to draw: most of the East African explorers' publications partook of the character of tourist travelogues aswellas scientific treatises. Nor was the society averse from taking financial and social advantage of the popular interest generated by the adventures and personal disputes of their explorer heroes

they were waiting for Europeans to come and free them from the yoke of the slave trade. 4

widened.

The limited support which the government gave to the RGS and its explorers in East Africa might also be seen as symptomatic even if foreign secretaries were wont to claim that they were simply encouraging geographical science. Whatever the state of the economy or of middle class opinion, the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the evidence is that even if the Foreign Office did arrange limited help for explorers and did give Livingstone a roving consul's commission to the chiefs of the interior of East Africa, the government certainly did not want to become directly involved beyond the coast lands.

cynical

Following Livingstone's death in 1873, a great many of those Europeans whose interest in East Africa had been aroused by the explorers began to consider various kinds of direct intervention. From 1876, there were, for example, serious attempts to provide an infrastructure of communications. Meanwhile the missionaries were encouraged to produce useful Africans in "industrial" missions where carpentry would be as important as the Gospel. In short, very direct interference in the lives of Africans was planned. By 1876, in fact, what I would wish to call the "unofficial mind" of imperialism had been so conditioned by the explorers as far as East Africa was concerned that it was prepared through various agencies to undertake this sort of direct action. It is not surprising to find this same "unofficial mind" responding very readily to King Leopold's initiative in setting up an international association to regenerate Africa, an initiative which was itself a direct response to the reports of African explorers. 73 C. M. Andrew has written of an "unofficial mind" of imperialism

s too. It was not just that Europeans now began to arrive in larger numbers, demand more and

ample,

Europeans,

omoted

to switch from

In the period of exploration the most notable visitors for the majority of East Africans were not the European explorers so much as other Africans and, more particularly, the Swahili and Arab traders from the coast and Zanzibar. By the late 1870s again, it might be argued, some sort of accommodation showed signs of being reached between these traders and many African

'Scientific geography' did, in fact, mean, more than anything, the recording of accurate observations for latitude, longitude and height on the basis of which satis? factory maps could be constructed. In this sense, the 'discovery' of a feature like the source of the Nile was indeed a discovery for it definitively established a scientific fact.

'scientific geo

appear to have been in the Society mainly because it was part of the fashionable London scene. Many such individuals may have joined because they considered their continental tours made them explorers but it seems reasonable to distinguish as a separate group the wealthy amateur travellers and big-game hunters who constitute 4 per cent of the sample. But much larger than all these groups except the scholars, bulks the servicemen, no less than 47 (23 per cent) of the sample being

out th

Clements Markha

r. There was in fact much more social and political cohesion in East African societies than most explorer

Although the British government moved to increase its control over East Africa for reasons that involve much wider considerations, the apparent need to improve law and order provided at least a very powerful justification. Indeed it was a necessary part of the process by which imperial objects could be achie

precursors. It is much more difficult to attempt an answer to the question of what Africans learned or thought they learned about Europeans during the period of exploration in East Africa. Obviously, first of all, the explorers' direct social and economic impact was slight. It is true that Captain Speke seems to have fathered a daughter in Buganda by one of the Kabaka's

Krapf was in a weak position and could not be more than a pawn but Speke, for example, had too large a following of reasonably well-organized porters to be taken entirely for granted. It was therefore possible for him to be a desirable ally for one side or the other in the war between the Tabora Arabs and Mnwya Sera; in the event, he tried to mediate in the dispute with some effect (Bridges, 1971). Stanley, who had an even more formidable caravan on his expeditions, and who, unlike all the other explorers, showed a willingness to act in a ruthless way, did frequently intervene as, for instance, in the war between Mirambo and the Arabs in 1

European explorers could, then, have a noticeable political effect although generally only in the short term. In the longer term, their special characteristics probably operated in different and less easily described ways. Early European visits to Buganda were marked by great questionings of the explorers on the place of Man in Society and in t

Mediterranean Sea.

fierce storms

Portugal’s exploring aims were largely commercial. The Portuguese wanted to find a sea route around Africa to the riches of Asia. Like other European powers, they wanted to trade directly in valuable Asian spices. The older trade routes to Asia were becoming increasingly blocked to them.

The Portuguese wanted to end Muslim control over northern Africa. That desire was one of several reasons why Portugal explored the continent in the 15th century. Spreading Christianity in Africa was another motive for Portuguese exploration, along with scientific curiosity. They also sought great wealth.

The Portuguese also wanted to establish trade with western Africa. Gold, ivory, and African slaves had long been traded across the Sahara to Muslims in the north.

By the time Henry died in 1460, his navigators had explored the coast as far south as Sierra Leone. For a time the Portuguese were busy fighting the Moroccans, and few exploring expeditions were sent out. John II became king of Portugal in 1481. Under John, the Portuguese once again began exploring Africa regularly

stone pillar

For the next 15 years, Livingstone was constantly on the move in the African interior. First, he ventured north of Cape Town into the Kalahari, a vast dry plain. By 1842 he had already traveled farther north in the Kalahari than any other European. In 1844 he traveled to Mabotsa to establish a mission station. Along the way he was mauled by a lion, and his left arm was injured. The following year Livingstone married Moffat’s daughter Mary. She accompanied him on many of his travels.

Modern exploration of the Nile basin began when Egypt conquered Sudan starting in 1821. As a result, the Egyptians learned more about the courses of the Blue Nile and the White Nile. A Turkish officer, Selim Bimbashi, led three expeditions between 1839 and 1842. Two of them reached the point in what is now South Sudan where rapids make navigation of the Nile difficult.

er, Hen

much more recent work, still in use as a textbook in some East African schools, insists that the arrival of the explorers was a "portent" for the "simple societies" of East Africa

scholarly work on East African history, Coupland included a chapter on exploration which implied a more passive role for Africans

In essence, they were saying that since the arrival of European colonial rulers marked also the establishment of order, education, Christianity, and economic opportunity-in a word, progress-it must be the case that the explorers, because they were also Europeans, initiated the progress.

Henry Morton Stanley's first African expedition was in 1871, on assignment for The New York (/places/united-states-and-canada/us-political-geography/new-york) Herald to find Livingstone, who was assumed dead. Stanley's famous question upon finding him, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" made Stanley a household name in the explorer frenzy that followed Livingstone's journeys. Although not a scientist, Stanley was sent back out to answer the geographic questions left following Livingstone's death in 1873. Among these, Stanley set out in 1874 to circumnavigate the enormous Lake Victoria to see if it was a single body of water, and—more importantly—to see if it was the much-sought-after source of the Nile River. Stanley also planned to circumnavigate Lake Tanganyika (/places/africa/african-physical-geography/laketanganyika), to see if it was the source of the Nile, as Burton had suggested. Finally, Stanley planned to finish Livingstone's work of mapping the Lualaba River. Livingstone had theorized that the Lualaba, which flowed from Lake Bangweolo, was quite possibly the Nile itself. (Others thought that the Lualaba was the same as the Congo River, not the Nile.)

British missionary David Livingstone (/people/history/explorers-travelers-and-conquerorsbiographies/david-livingstone) (1813-1873), while partly on a quest to seek the elusive source of the Nile, discovered the Zambezi River and Victoria Falls (/places/africa/african-physicalgeography/victoria-falls). Livingstone's expedition went on to discover parts of the main network of Africa's largest rivers, including the Congo, but his work remained unfinished, leaving many questions that Stanley would soon answer.

Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) and John Hanning Speke (/people/history/explorers-travelers-and-conquerors-biographies/john-hanning-speke) (18271864) explored part of Lake Victoria and a section of the Nile, and theorized that either Victoria or Lake Tanganyika (/places/africa/african-physical-geography/lake-tanganyika), southwest of Victoria, was the river's source

It took four months for Stanley to meet the banks of Tanganyika, but he circumnavigated it successfully in 51 days.

Verney Lovett

The Congo, as Stanley had now surmised that the Lualaba and the Congo were the same river, would have nearly 200 miles (320 km) of the most severe rapids he would encounter.

Stanley's journey also concluded what we know about the character of the Congo River: from its source, just south of Lake Tanganyika, the river begins as the Lualaba, heads southwestward to Lake Bangweolo, then turns north to the Zambia/Zaire border to Lake Mweru, where it becomes the Congo. The mighty river crosses the equator twice, placing it in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. After 3,000 miles (4,800 km) of a wild path through extreme landscapes, it reaches the Atlantic Ocean.

".7 Joseph Conrad once described the most famous African explorers as "conquerors of truth",8 not be

exposed the inner secrets of distant regions (as they often claimed), but rather because they established particular ways of reading unknown landscapes.

Stanley finds his place in conventional accounts of the history of exploration as the man who finally settled the long-running dispute over the sources of the

Stanley's approach to geographical exploration in many ways embodied the cultural style of the new imp

In 1866, he embarked on what was supposed to be his last and greatest expedition: a quest to locate the fabled source of the Nile River.

unvarnished

This paper is about a singular book – Missionary Travels – and its wider significance in the history of exploration, geography and travel writing. It is organised, like a miniature Victorian triple-decker, into three parts. The first portrays the exploration of Africa as a literary event: in order to understand a work like Missionary Travels, we need to grasp something of the wider culture in which knowledge about distant places was produced and consumed (Driver 1996). The second considers the text of Missionary Travels itself, focussing on its somewhat paradoxical form: for what is perhaps the nineteenth century’s best-known travel narrative is in many respects not a narrative at all, and only partly about travel. There are multiple hands and voices at work in this book, as was typically the case with published works on exploration andtravel(MacLaren 2011;Withers & Keighren 2011;Henderson 2012).Moreover, for a text sometimes supposed to epitomise the certitudes of the pre-Darwinian moral world, the authorial voice is notably ambivalent about its own claims to knowledge. The final part of the paper considers the ways in which Livingstone’s book was put to work, by missionary, explorer and imperial adventurer alike. This, its afterlife, is as much part of the story of Missionary Travels as the author and the original text themselves

Consider the ‘Map of African Literature’ published by novelist turned explorer, Reade, in 1873, the year of Livingstone’s death (Figure 1). It shows the white spaces of the continent colonised by the names of explorers, LIVINGSTONE particularly prominent amongst them.

The article's author declared that German colonialists would have to reorient themselves away from exploration toward new ways of exerting control over Africa.2

While travel, including exploratory travel, remained central to the German experience in East Africa after 1

arked the end of an era for how the German reading public experienced that travel. The style of travel writing about East Africa changed to fit the new needs of the colonial state and the reading demands of the metropolitan p

K), the founding organization of Germany's East African colony, repurposed the scientific travel narrative that had formed the entirety of their knowledge about East Africa before 1884 to further the organization's goals of building a colonial e

Travelogues were particularly important in German East Africa as compared to Germany's other colonies because the GfdK began its acquis

«That of the encounter between a European explorer, the intrepid leader of an expeditionary caravan and emissary of s

tion of territory without the support of existing networks in the region and contrary to the Bismarck regime's wishes (Smith 32

tion of territory without the support of existing networks in the region and contrary to the Bismarck regime's wishe

International African Association exploratory expedition, a hunting trip, a scientific expedition, or an English trading expedition (Wagner 28).8

Scientific accounts of East African travel by German explorers and missionaries were prominent in Germany in the early 1880s, despite Germany's lack of a form

nths of existence, they suggested possible places to find such wide stretches. Their lack of knowledge of Africa was apparent in their proposals: Joseph Freiherr Molitor von Mühlfeld called for greater emigration to Argentina, Major Friedrich Wilhelm Alexander von Mechow suggested colonizing on the Kwango River, and Alexander Merensky recommended what is today southern Angola

Like earlier travelers, Peters and Pfeil went on lecture tours and presented their travels to metropolitan audiences.1

The 1884 expedition's members followed the pre-colonial travelers' methods and published travelogues about their exploration and conquest.

They inspired him to dream up a plan to acquire land in East Africa. Great riches, he believed, were to be made on Lake Malawi. He suggested the region of Usagara, which according to Stanley held great hope for colonial development (Zur Erwerbung 5

Explorers frequently suggested that their travels served a higher calling that would advance the progress of humanity. A calling beyond the self explained the explorer's willingness to brave danger and made him a hero to those who believed in the same calling. To promote their own bravery and skill in the eyes of European audiences, explorers had to convince them that the dangers they faced were beyond anything one could experience in Europe. Explorers traversed unknown places posing a great deal of personal danger and had to depend on aid networks of which they had little knowle

avelers drew comparisons between African societies and ones more familiar to European audiences.

Peter s's and Pfeil's travelogues fit many of the topoi of earlier travelogues about East Africa, but they sought to fix their travels as permanent markers on the East African landscape, to make German colonialism real in East Africa through writing.

Like earlier travelers, Peters cited European history to make his argument, but he used a specifically German history in a way that inscribed German cultural achievements onto the

ition» 304). In all of his accounts of East African travel, Peters resorted frequently to quoting poetry to demonstrate his Germanness or a European spirit of exploration. His historical references were not meant merely to make landscapes more familiar to domestic audiences, but served to make them specif

Travel for Hellgrewe was a series of short vignettes as he moved between stations of German

isen

Kultur in the East African wilderness; travel was not the long journey away from civili

Hellgrewe's book makes clear that the change in form could not be attributed solely to the lack o

new areas to explore. Hellgrewe still searched for the fetishized African wilderness that had motivated pre-colonial German travelers to East Africa and provided the majority of the material for their ac

Such was the state of travel writing as planning began for the German expedition to rescue Emin Pasha in 1888. Inspiration for the expedition had come largely from a travel narrative in the pre-colonial style, Wilhelm Junker's Reisen

in Afrika. Junker had traveled in East Central Africa from 1875 throu

1886. Near the end of his travels, he had become trapped in Equatoria when the Mahdi attacked Khartoum

Pre-colonial travelers had been able to establish their own myths through their expeditionary narrative, but Peters was not afforded the chance in the wake of his failed expedition.

ast Africa. Other forms of travel writing replaced the travelogue of African exploration prevalent earlier in the century. Expeditionary reports certainly remained central to German colonization in East Africa after 1891. As

There was an obvious danger of distortion through misunderstanding or a deliberate desire to increase the appeal and interest of a scen

Perhaps he interpreted Livingstone's description as best he could but perhaps, too, he inserted elements which he knew would appeal to the public

problems of misrepresentation by no means disappear. Scenes are staged, people are dressed specially or put in what are taken to be appropriate surroundings.

what nineteenth-century European explorers had to say about non-European areas and peoples they had encountered tended to be taken at face value because it had come to be believed that explorers no longer told tall stories but were detached and scientific.

and images from travellers' accounts was to be relied upon

Over the next century, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium all established (or tried to establish) colonies, trading outposts, or both in Africa. Although warfare between competing European powers rarely erupted, the natives often resisted European incursions. The African tribes, however, could neither coordinate their efforts nor overcome the technological advantage of European weapons. In every instance but one (Ethiopia, who defeated the Italians in 1896), they failed to resist the onslaught of European colonizers.

Exploration itself can be due to a passionate interest in Africans. It has been suggested that David Livingstone was perhaps 'the one explorer who may be said to have lived and died for Africans rather than for Af

cience.2 But another strong influence on the explorers, besides the scientific spirit, was the European romantic movement, associated with the spirit of anti-scie

ience.2 But another strong influence on the explorers, besides the scientific spirit, was the European romantic movement, associated with the spirit of anti-scie