The activities of European hunters, traders, discoverers and explorers in Africa during the 19th Century

It was common to view European explorers of Africa as ‘discoverers’ of unknown places and on European missionaries as ground breaking pioneers in the task of Christian evangelization in Africa.These tasks could not be conceivable without African cooperation.

The European explorer relied heavily on Africans and Arabs in a number of ways: principally, the Africans and Arabs guided the white men along their old trade routes – African caravan leaders virtually organized the expeditions for the white men. An example is Sidi Bombay, a Yao who was enslaved at the age of twelve and taken to India, freed there and returned to East Africa to work as a caravan leader from the Sultan of Zanzibar. Sidi served under Speke in his journeys to the source of the Nile in 1857-8 and 1860-2, and later under Stanley and Cameron. Sidi was a brilliant organizer, a skilful interpreter and an astute ambassador in negotiations between his expeditions’ leaders and local rulers.

African also carried supplies for the explorers, and local rulers provided protection for them. Tippu Tip in Eastern Zaire regularly succoured European travelers in difficulties, including Livingstone, Cameron and Stanley. Explorers enlarged the African’s horizons by establishing connections between local African geographical facts and a larger whole. For instance, Speke’s discovery that Lake Victoria was the source of the Nile and his establishment of the link between that Lake and Egypt was an important addition to all human knowledge. Speke was more than just the first tourist to see Lake Victoria.

Explorers were also precursors of the European political scramble for Africa. Not only did they open up the interior to other Europeans in a purely geographical sense, they also stimulated imperialism, be it economic, cultural, or political. Most of the explorers favoured colonialism. Livingstone as early as 1856, proposed a British Colony in the heart of central Africa.

David Livingstone – missionary and explorer

He was born at Blantyre near Glasgow in March 1813. At the age of 10 he went to work at a cotton mill until 1836 but spent his spare time improving his education by reading and attending evening classes. By 1836 he was qualified to enter university to train as a doctor. He volunteered to work with the London Missionary society and set sail for South Africa in 1840. He went to Kuruman, the mission station founded by Robert Moffat. He remained there for a number of years, but all the time wanted to move farther north to areas which had not been evangelized. He was given permission to found a mission station at Mbotsa amongst the Bakgatla where he remained until 1845. He worked among the Bakwena. Sechele, the Bakwena chief, showed himself receptive to Livingstone’s teachings. Eventually he was baptized but there was a familiar problem of polygamy. This was not only a personal problem but a political one. Sechele had married the daughters of a number of subordinate chiefs in order to bind them to himself and so encourage greater unity among his people. Sechele sent away all but one of his wives and he was baptized in 1848. Later he lapsed into traditional religion for a period but after due repentance was received again as a Christian. This time his conversion was permanent, his example was not followed by his people.

Livingstone made several journeys north when he was at kolobeng seeing Lake Ngami and meeting with Sebetwane, the Kololo King. Two ideas developed that Zambezi might be the highway into the interior of Africa and that if articles of European manufacture were supplied to the interior by means of legitimate commerce then the slave trade would become impossible. Livingstone set out in June 1852 and reached Linyanti the following year and was welcomed by Sekeletu the new Kololo king.

Stanley Henry Morton

First achieved fame when he found missionary Livingstone at Ujiji on Lake Victoria after the missionary had been missing in the interior for several years.This first expedition of Stanley’s, in 1871 -2, was an old fashioned affair, in the tradition of the fairly peaceful expeditions of the recent past. Stanley’s second expedition from 1874-77, across the continent from Zanzibar to the Zaire mouth, his third in 1879-80, when he began work in lower Zaire for King Leopold II of Belgium and his fourth, the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition of 1887-90, across the continent from east to west were all characterized by semi-military methods. Stanley was the first explorer to rely on large, well equipped, well armed columns, and ruthless military action against local populations who showed any hostility towards or suspicion of the expeditions. The very size of the columns made necessary intimidation of local peoples, who mistook Stanley and his party for slave traders. Without intimidation it would have been impossible to obtain food.

The second expedition, for example, was marked by military action against resisting Africans societies such as the Bumbire islanders of Lake Victoria and numerous small communities in the Zaire basin. The second expedition was the most publicized east –west transcontinental journey made by a European and one of the most significant African journeys of the 1870s. First Stanley’s sojourn in Buganda in 1875 resulted in the sending of Christian missionaries to Buganda. This in turn was one of the factors leading to British colonial occupation of Uganda and Kenya. Secondly, between 1875 and 1877 Stanley charted the main stream of the Zaire River. This not only opened up to Europe the general possibility of exploiting the economic potential of the Zaire Basin, but led directly to the actual beginnings of Leopold’s imperial activities in Zaire. Stanley was to become one of Leopold’s agents in Zaire between 1879 and 1885.
In his attitude to Christianity Stanley was a materialist and a realist. He understood that Mutesa, the Kabaka of Buganda, was impressed with Christianity not because of spiritual interest but because of admiration for the white man’s technological and military power. He believed therefore that if European Christian missionaries were to be successful in Africa they needed to be linked with European commercial and military power, and specifically with colonial occupation, which would enable Africans to associate the white man’s religion with the material benefits of contact with him.

Stanley’s last expedition, to rescue Emin Pasha, was an anti-climax after his second journey and imperialist work in Zaire. It was as futile and as unnecessary as his first expedition to find Livingstone. Livingstone did not need to be found – he well knew where he was. Nor did Emin Pasha need to be rescued. Emin Pasha, the Governor of that remnant of Egyptian Equatoria not overrun by the Mahdists, was quite capable, with his force of ‘loyal’ Sudanese under Selim Bey, of defending his base at Kavalli’s on Lake Mobutu from the Mahdists who were preoccupied with Egypt and Ethiopia. In fact, the men of Stanley’s relief expedition arrived at Kavalli’s in such a state of destitution and sickness that Emin could be said to have rescued his rescuers. When Stanley and his men were fit again, Stanley insisted that Emin Pasha accompany him to Zanzibar. Emin, a renowned ornithologist, simply wanted Stanley to take back to London his collection of several thousand stuffed Tropical African birds and give them to a museum. To Emin’s disgust, Stanley left the birds behind and took Emin instead, though Selim Bey and most of the Sudanese soldiers stayed.

Discoverers-explorers: Heinrich Barth and Samuel Baker

Barth was one of the greatest European explorers. Between 1849 and 1855 he journeyed from Tripoli across the Sahara to the Western Sudan, where he travelled from Timbuktu in the west to sokoto, Bornu and Lake Chad in the east and Adamawa to the south. His purpose was to survey old trade routes and to make treaties on behalf of the British government which financed him; these treaties were not followed up. As a discoverer his achievements lay less in surveying centuries-old Muslim trade routes than discovering African civilizations. He recorded much of the rich and complex history of the lands he passed through, wrote very detailed and scientific descriptions of the lands he saw and showed a deep understanding of African society.

Samuel Baker lacked Barth’s priceless quality of empathy because he was insensitive. An English landowner who became bored with running his estates in England and Ceylon and first came to Africa as a big-game hunter, later turning to exploration. He arrived in Bunyoro in 1864 he was the first European to see lake (Mobutu) which he named Albert after Queen Victoria’s late husband. Baker sowed seeds of misunderstanding between the Lake Kingdom and Britain.

Baker was not welcomed by the Omukama of Bunyoro, Kamurasi, who at first delayed him at the frontier, then delayed seeing him, next delaying giving him permission to go to the lake, and finally as baker was leaving, marooned him temporarily on an island in the Nile. Kamurasi was suspicious of baker’s motive for coming namely to simply look at the lake especially since he had many guns. Baker’s impatience and angry moods at the delays, and his clearly expressed contempt for Africans did nothing to help his cause of mutual understanding. Baker returned to Bunyoro in 1872 as an imperialist.

Source: https://worldwidehistoryonline.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/stanley-henry-morton.docx