European exploration of Africa

Kilimanjaro to the peaks of Ethiopia at the head of the Blue Nile

The geography of

Greco-Roman geography. Northwest Africa (the Maghreb) was known as either Libya or Africa, while Egypt

European exploration of

sea route to India and the Far East, but European exploration of Africa itself remained very limited during the 16th and 17th centuries. The European powers were content to establish trading posts along the coast while they were actively exploring and colonizing the New World. Exploration of the interior of Africa was thus mostly left to the Muslim slave traders, who in tandem with the Muslim conquest of Sudan established far-reaching networks and supported the economy of a number of Sahelian kingdoms

during the 15th to 18th centuries.

At the beginning of the 19th century, European knowledge of the geography of the interior of sub-Saharan Africa was still rather limited. Expeditions exploring Southern Africa were made during the 1830s and 1840s, so that around the midpoint of the 19th century and the beginning of the colonial Scramble for Africa, the unexplored parts were now limited to what would turn out to be the Congo Basin and the African Great Lakes. This "Heart of Africa" remained one of the last remaining "blank spots" on world maps of the later 19th century (alongside the Arctic, Antarctic, and interior of the Amazon Basin). It was left for 19th-century European explorers, including those searching for the famed sources of the Nile, notably John Hanning Speke, Richard Francis Burton, David Livingstone, and Henry Morton Stanley, to complete the exploration of Africa by the 1870s. After this, the general geography of Africa was known, but it was left to further expeditions during the 1880s onward, notably, those led by Oskar Lenz, to flesh out more detail such as the continent's geological makeup.

History

Antiquity

The

Phoenicians explored North Africa, establishing a number of colonies, the most prominent of which was Carthage. Carthage itself conducted exploration of West Africa. The first alleged circumnavigation of the African continent attested to was made by Phoenician sailors, in an expedition commissioned by Egyptian pharaoh Necho II, c. 600 BC which took three years. A report of this expedition is provided by Herodotus (4.37). They sailed south, rounded the Cape heading west, made their way north to the Mediterranean, and then returned home. He states that they paused each year to sow and harvest grain. Herodotus himself is sceptical of the historicity of this feat, which would have taken place about 120 years before his birth; however, the reason he gives for disbelieving the story is the sailors' reported claim that when they sailed along the southern coast of Africa, they found the Sun stood to their right, in the north; Herodotus, who was unaware of the spherical shape of the Earth found this impossible to believe. Some commentators took this circumstance as proof that the voyage is historical, but other scholars still dismiss the report as unlikely.^[1]

Euthymenes of Massalia explored the coast of West Africa in the early sixth century BC.

The West African coast may have been explored by Hanno the Navigator in an expedition c. 500 BC.^[2] The report of this voyage survives in a short Periplus in Greek, which was first cited by Greek authors in the 3rd century BC.^[3]^: 162–3 There is some uncertainty as to how far precisely Hanno reached; he may have sailed as far as Sierra Leone, Guinea or even Gabon.^[4] However, Robin Law notes that some commentators have argued that Hanno's exploration may have taken him no farther than southern Morocco.^[5]

Africa is named for the Afri people who settled in the area of current-day Tunisia. The Roman province of Africa spanned the Mediterranean coast of what is now Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. The parts of North Africa north of the Sahara were well known in antiquity. However, the Romans never seem to have explored the Sahara itself, or the lands South of it.^[6]

Prior to the 2nd century BC, however,

Indus back to Macedonia passing south of Africa as a shortcut compared to the land route. Even Eratosthenes around 200 BC still assumed an extent of the landmass no further south than the Horn of Africa

.

By the Roman imperial period, the Horn of Africa was well-known to Mediterranean geographers. The trading post of Rhapta, described as "the last marketplace of Azania," may correspond to the coast of Tanzania. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, dated to the 1st century AD, appears to extend geographical knowledge further south, to Southeast Africa. Ptolemy's world map of the 2nd century is well aware that the African continent extends significantly further south than the Horn of Africa, but has no geographic detail south of the equator (it is unclear whether it is aware of the Gulf of Guinea).^[7]

Middle Ages

Between 859 and 861 a

Mediterranean

, including North Africa.

From 1146 to 1148 the

Norseman, Roger II of Sicily, established the Kingdom of Africa

.

In May 1291 the

sea route to India around Africa, but went lost. A few years later, in 1312, possibly in search of the Vivaldi brothers, a fellow Genoese, Lancelotto Malocello rediscovered the Canary Islands. Lanzarote

is named after him.

West African

coast to find the legendary "River of Gold" in 1346, but the outcome of his quest and his fate are unknown.

Early Portuguese expeditions

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[1] Alan B. Lloyd, Herodotus, Book II (1975, 1988 Leiden). Lloyd, Alan B. (1977). "Necho and the Red Sea: Some Considerations". S2CID 192316548
. Alan Lloyd suggests that the Greeks at this time understood that anyone going south far enough and then turning west would have the sun on their right but found it unbelievable that Africa reached so far south. He suggests that "It is extremely unlikely that an Egyptian king would, or could, have acted as Necho is depicted as doing" and that the story might have been triggered by the failure of
Livius
.

[2] The Periplus of Hanno; a voyage of discovery down the west African coast (1912)

[Harden-3] ISBN 0-14-021375-9
.

[4] "Some taking Hanno to the Cameroons, or even Gabon, while others say he stopped at Sierre Leone." (Harden 1971, p. 169).

[5] ISBN 9780521215923
. Retrieved 20 February 2016.

[6] ISBN 978-1-86842-491-7
.

[7] The limit of Ptolemy's knowledge in the west is Cape Spartel (35° 48′ N); while he does assume that the coast eventually retreats in a "Great Gulf of the Western Ocean", this is not likely based on any knowledge of the Gulf of Guinea. Eric Anderson Walker, The Cambridge history of the British Empire, Volume 7, Part 1, 1963, p. 66. In the east, Ptolemy is aware of the Red Sea (Sinus Arabicus) and the protrusion of the Horn of Africa, describing the gulf south of the Horn of Africa as Sinus Barbaricus.

[8] ISBN 9788888449821
[4]

[burnham1899-9] Burnham, Frederick Russell (1899). "Northern Rhodesia". In Wills, Walter H. (ed.). Bulawayo Up-to-date; Being a General Sketch of Rhodesia . Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. pp. 177–180.

[10] ISBN 978-0-674-07497-2
.

[11] ISBN 978-0-674-07497-2
.

[WDL-12] "Sahara and Sudan: The Results of Six Years Travel in Africa". World Digital Library. 1879–1889. Retrieved 2 October 2013.

[13] ttp://www.rhodesia.nl/rhodesiana/volume19.pdf ^{[bare URL PDF]}

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European exploration of Africa

History

Antiquity

Middle Ages

Early Portuguese expeditions

Early modern history

Portuguese

Dutch

Other early modern European presence

The 19th century

List of Africa explorers

15th century

15th/16th century

16th century

18th century

19th century

Early 20th century

See also

References

Bibliography