A frica in the 19th century was a continent still largely unknown to the European world. Although the African coastline had been mapped with increasing accuracy since the Portuguese voyages of the 15th century, the continent’s interior remained a blank, a space to be filled with the fantasies of European cartographers.
It was only with the intellectual fervour of the 18th-century Enlightenment that serious efforts to establish even the most basic geographical knowledge of Africa were undertaken. Learned societies in Britain and France began sponsoring expeditions to answer what were seen at the time as two key geographical questions, the source of the river Niger and the location of Timbuktu.
In Britain the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, more commonly referred to as the African Association, was formed in 1788 and sent a succession of explorers to West Africa. Amongst these was Mungo Park who reached the river Niger in 1805, publishing his Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa on his return. Park sailed down the river Niger from Bamako into what is modern-day Nigeria where, with what remained of his expedition party, he drowned in the river he had set out to discover.
