The last voyage transporting Africans across the Atlantic took place in The conference gave no say to the African peoples whose homelands were to be arbitrarily divided, disregarding ethnic and social differences.
This was to cause issues regarding national identity when African nations were to gain independence a century later. The infrastructure built by European powers was focused only for colonial purposes, serving no benefit to the African populous. By formally mapping and partitioning Africa, the conference also helped to legitimise European colonisation of Africa.
Ghana becomes the first country to gain independence in West Africa Ghana led the way in the decolonisation of West Africa, with Guinea following in , and Togo, Mali and Senegal in However, lack of infrastructure and a dependence on European powers for energy, as well as inexperienced government and issues with national identity made governing independently difficult, leading to political unrest in many countries.
Highest level of deforestation in the world recorded in Nigeria Between and , Nigeria lost The resulting soil erosion, lack of biodiversity and desertification has made agriculture, on which many communities depend, increasingly difficult, contributing to conflict in some areas.
A new expedition has been fitted out in England for the purpose of further exploring the celebrated river Niger, which is described by the Moors under the name of Net el Abeeti, or the "river of slaves," and called by the negroes, Joliba, or the "great waters. The chief obstacle to the advance of Europeans- into the inwicr of Afriea has-hitherto been the terrible climate.
This has proved most deadly to the white race, and has been the great barrier to travelers anl to missionaries. When the first English expedition ascended the Niger, about , so great was the mortality that on itsreturn, it is said, there were hardly enough left to throw the dead overboard.
But this terrible experience did not prevent a renewal of the attempt. A dozen years later, in , a second expedition sailed up the river, under Mr.
McGregor Laird, who fitted out a small iron steamer for the purpose. An experienced physician who accompanied it, as soon as the steamer entered the river, began giving quinine to every man on board, in doses of about six grains. Those were given every day, and continued for sixteen weeks, or fill the time that the expedition was in the river, and was even kept up for a fortnight after it had crossed the bar again, and vvas out in the open sea.
The African Association of Journal of the Royal African Society, vol. My translation, like the other quotations from the text originally in English. The Association lost no time in focusing its efforts on mapping the course of the Niger River. Before the famous maiden voyage of Mungo Park, in , three other attempts had already been made, by different routes. The first two, in , set off from North Africa and were unsuccessful. John Ledyard, who had traveled with Captain Cook, died before leaving Cairo, and Simon Lucas returned to Britain soon after leaving Tripoli, without achieving anything more than some information about the adjacent region.
The third attempt, in , was made by Daniel Houghton, taking a different route, penetrating the African interior via the Gambia River, at that time a traditional English trading post on the African coast.
Houghton never returned, but his name was revived some years later by Mungo Park. He had come close to the Niger, but deviated off the course to the North, where he died at the southern edge of the Sahara. Seven years after its foundation, therefore, it was Mungo Park, the European, who finally reached the course of the Niger river in the African interior, and returned to tell the tale.
Originally following the route taken by Houghton, he had seen " with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission - the long sought for majestic Niger, glittering in the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing to the eastwards". PARK, , However, his task was not completed, as he was unable to map the course of the great river in its entirety.
Theories about the hydrography of the interior of the African continent were still wide open. Doubts as to whether the Niger ran toward the Nile, or joined further South to the Congo River, still persisted.
Park would return to Africa in to attempt to complete his work 3 3 Prior to that, no less than three other attempts had been made, financed by the African Association, and all of them resulting in the traveler's death. The Story of the Niger. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, In fact, he set off accompanied by " thirty European soldiers, twenty Black servants, fifty donkeys, six horses and six carpenters"; when he reached the river, only seven of the Europeans remained, and when he died in an ambush shortly afterwards, he was the last White man to remain alive LLOYD, , The search for the solution to the geographical problem in question came to a halt during the wars of Europe, until , and the following year, two other expeditions were launched, one to go down the Niger and the other to go up the Congo, in the hopes of meeting up in the middle.
The following significant news brought from the interior of the African continent by a European involved in the attempt to map the course of the Niger came as the result of the first voyage of Hugh Clapperton and Dixon Denham, between and Gordon Laing set off before Clapperton's return, with the aim of reaching Timbuktu from the North. Having achieved his objective, he died en route to the Niger.
Setting out from Tripoli, poorly funded by the British government - Clapperton received one hundred pounds for the trip and Denham offered his services for free - the travelers reached Lake Chad, where they separated. Clapperton headed west, passing Kano and reaching Sokoto, where he came into contact with the Sultan Muhamad Bello. He did not reach the Niger, but received a warm welcome and gathered important information for a subsequent journey, for which he departed just three months after arriving back in England, at the end of This time, Clapperton followed with instructions from the British government to establish more definitive relations with Sokoto, setting off from the West coast.
Having reached the Niger River, and once again the seat of the Caliphate, he did not survive to tell his tale. His notes and the news of his journey were carried to Europe by his assistant, Richard Lander, who also completed Clapperton's account with his own memories. Lander returned by practically the same route as they had taken. And it would be he who, in , would definitively establish the course of the Niger, along with his brother John.
The route chosen was similar to that of the previous journey; they left from Badagry and reached the Niger River, sailing towards the coast. See Lockhart, J. Hugh Clapperton into the Interior of Africa. Records of the Second Expedition According to the authors: "In fact, the Lander brothers were attacked by pirates near Onitsha, and sold down river to an Ibo official in Aboh [ ] they were rescued by Captain Lake and taken back to England.
The general mapping of the course of the Niger River was practically complete, and the 'victory' of British geography opened the doors to a new form of travel. Having demonstrated its navigability, the next attempts to establish contact with the African interior would be by river, sailing up the river in steamships.
Perhaps the great name of this new phase of African exploration was McGregor Laird, who was the first to attempt the route, in In a private enterprise, Laird hired Richard Lander and ordered two steamships - one wooden, the " Quorra", and the other iron, the " Alburkha" , the latter being the first iron vessel to sail on open seas - to sail up the course of the Niger. William Allen, then a lieutenant with the British Navy, was appointed to accompany the expedition, and was the only official presence of the British government in this endeavor.
At the end of two years, having traveled up the river as far as the junction with the Benue twice, he provided a more detailed mapping of the lower course of the Niger, at a cost of thirty-nine lives of the forty-eight Europeans who had begun the enterprise, Richard Lander being included among the fatalities.
Despite some trade contracts during the s, especially on the part of John Beecroft, future British consul to the Bays of Benin and Biafra, the next major expedition would be the one financed by the British government in , following the plan proposed by Thomas Foxwell Buxton to bring a definitive end to the Atlantic slave traffic.
Thus, in around forty years, one of the biggest 'geographical problems' of the 19th century had been resolved, but the question of the high mortality among the Europeans in the region was still a major obstacle to their remaining in the interior.
But these years also witnessed major changes, both in the interior of Africa, and in the European relations with the continent. On the Yoruba wars, see for example: Oguntomisin, G. Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. For an approach on the Oyo empire, see Law, Robin. Robin Law: The Oyo empire c. John ed. The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. This text therefore seeks to present some of the changes in the representations of Africa, and in the relationship between Europe and Africa in published reports of the journeys described above.
It also seeks to reflect, albeit briefly, on the impact of the European presence in the interior of the continent on relations between regions. Direct contacts between Europeans and Africans south of the Sahara Desert go back to at least the 15th century, with the start of the Portuguese voyages in search of a sea route to the Far East.
It is certain, however, that much of this prolonged contact was basically due to a specific activity, namely, the slave trade. Britain, in particular, used West Africa, more specifically the Gold Coast, and the Bays of Benin and Biafra, as the main locations for the establishment of their trading posts.
Furthermore, this trade was concentrated mainly in the 18th century. The Atlantic slave trade, however, did not involve European penetration into the continent. This trade functioned through the supply of 'merchandise' directly on the coast, through complex inter-African networks established between different political formations of the interior and the coast.
The defense structures of the African States, and the difficulties arising from the high mortality of Europeans in the tropics, did little to encourage the attempts to penetrate the continent which, as we have seen, did not begin until the end of the 18th century. Despite this, however, only a small territorial space was formally in the hands of the Portuguese State at the beginning of the 19th century.
Despite the obvious difficulties encountered by the British travelers in the first half of the 19th century, there was an increasing "naturalization" of the European presence in the societies of the African interior, in the travel accounts. This "naturalization" can be seen at different points in the texts. For example, the constant reference to European goods and products along the routes traveled. In fact, in the first report of Mungo Park, there is already a clear indication of this presence, when the author states that: " travelers, when they go from Gambia to the interior, pay the tariffs on European goods [ ] these rates are paid in every town ".
PARK, , 34 Thus, even though he was probably the first 'White' in many of the places he passed through, the European presence already existed in the form of goods, which were the preferred 'currency' for the payment of rates on the way to the interior. Although traveling by a different route, Hugh Clapperton, also supposedly one of the first 'Whites' to enter Kano, was surprised to find a particular item being sold in the market:.
For three Spanish dollars, I bought a green English umbrella, an item that I little expected to find, but which is by no means uncommon : my Moorish servants, in their figurative language, were wont to give it the name of 'the cloud'. Although the trade route through which these umbrellas reached the African interior was probably trans-Saharan, their presence here clearly demonstrated a familiarity with at least some types of European goods.
There are numerous mentions of reports of journeys to African chiefs sitting under their umbrellas at official events. A presence that the travelers themselves gradually helped to strengthen - with their increasingly greater loads of 'gifts' to be distributed - and that they, literally, lost no time in emphasizing.
Lander, for example, visiting the king of "Katunga", 10 10 Katunga is the Hausa name of the Old Oyo capital describing the monarch, reports that:. His robe was a combination of silk and green velvet and red cotton.
His feet wore English socks and native sandals, beautifully handcrafted, and underneath was stretched a carpet of fine blue cloth, a present from Captain Clapperton. Fabrics and even English socks could be seen in the presentation garb of the king of Oyo. This was not the first time he had been visited by English travelers, and their goods had already been circulating in the region for some time. These references, whether direct or indirect, to the European presence in the interior of the continent, continue to appear in many passages of the account.
Perhaps the most interesting of these comes after a brief description of the religious concepts of Yarro, king of Kiama, a seven day walk northwest of Katunga.
According to Lander, Yarro called himself a Muslim, but was very unorthodox, given the trust he placed in the tools and symbols of his traditional religion, which were distributed in every corner of his home.
In this place, one of the rooms was also adorned with no less than: " The nature of this European 'presence' on the continent, however, was changing rapidly, and the relational position between, on one hand the British representatives and on the other, the African authorities and populations, underwent significant shifts in balance during the period covered by the journeys analyzed.
The stated goals of these journeys present an apparent coherence between them. In general, the aims of these journeys were to produce a geographical mapping of the interior, to prospect for new trading possibilities, to spread Christianity and civilization, and to replace the slave trade with so-called legitimate trade. However, these aims alternated in degrees of importance, depending on the period and the traveler.
This variation is clear when we compare the texts diachronically. These nuances of balance in the relationship, as well as the relative importance of the objectives expressed by the travelers, will be explored in the following topics, particularly the accounts of the journeys of Park, Lander, Laird, and the official expedition of The following account [ ] is offered to the public by the direction of my noble and honorable employers, the members of the African Association.
I regret that it is such small reward for the support I received from them. As a composition, it has nothing to recommend it, except the truth. It is a plain, unvarnished account, without pretension of any kind, except that it expands, to some degree, knowledge of African geography. For this purpose, my services were offered, and accepted, by the Association. PARK, , preface. The remainder of the preface is dedicated only to explaining who helped him compile the annotated data, draw the map, and deliver the work for publication.
No mention of the slave trade appears at this point. The first chapter, which begins specifically with the so-called "author's motivations for his journey" and "Instructions and departure", also makes no mention or criticism of the slave trade.
His motives are individual curiosity and the certainty of the reward he would receive from the "honorable men" who had commissioned him, if he proved capable of making the "African geography more familiar" to his countrymen, and "opened new sources of wealth and new trade routes for their ambitions and industries". PARK, , 02 His instructions are limited to the approximate route that should be followed to map the course of the Niger River and establish where it flowed into the sea.
It is important to remember that although funded by the African Association, Park's journey took place more than a decade before the official withdrawal of England from the Atlantic slave trade. And indeed, it would be somewhat ironic to openly defend the extinction of this trade, as the author received goods, guides, even a slave boy to accompany him up the river, from a slave trader named Dr.
Langley, established at a trading post miles further inland, on the banks of the Gambia River. Despite the lack of explicit concern to put an end to the slave trade, Park devoted a chapter exclusively to the institution of slavery in the interior of Africa, concluding with the following passage:.
Such are the general outlines of the system of slavery which prevails in Africa; and it is evident, from its nature and extent, that it is a system of no modern date. It probably had its origin in the remote ages of antiquity, before the Mahomedans explored a path across the Desert. How far it is maintained and supported by the slave traffic, which for two hundred years the nations of Europe have carried on with the natives of the Coast, it is neither my province nor in my power to explain.
The message in Park's text is relatively clear: slavery in Africa cannot be blamed on the Europeans, or even on the slave trade. And the effects of abolishing the trade would not be significant, as 'many wise and worthy persons fondly expect', in a clear reference to the sponsors of his own journey.
Finally, Park seems to maintain a rather negative view of the coeval state of the Africans, i. The heroic status that Mungo Park acquired, thanks to the completion of his journey and the publication of this book, was due to the fact that he was the first European to have sighted the Niger and returned to tell the tale. Indeed, this was no mean feat in the European imagination, given the high level of mortality among travelers that came before and after Park, as already mentioned.
Compare this with 1. Headrick, D. However, the picture that emerges from the reading of the text of his account is more than a kind of anti-hero, destitute, subject to the demands of the African populations and begging for his survival among the slaves in the African interior. The passages in the book where the author is obliged to interact with slaves, in search of something to eat or a place to sleep, are plentiful.
Park, M. Travels to interior districts On this occasion, he was begging for provisions. These moments appear especially when he is in the Islamic lands, among the Moors, who are portrayed as the great villains in the author's text. According to Park, the concerns with the prospect of " being captured by the Moors and sold as slaves became increasingly apparent" PARK, ,
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