The geography ofNorth Africa has been reasonably well known among Europeans sinceclassical antiquity inGreco-Roman geography. Northwest Africa (theMaghreb) was known as eitherLibya orAfrica, whileEgypt was considered part of Asia.
European exploration ofsub-Saharan Africa begins with theAge of Discovery in the 15th century, pioneered by theKingdom of Portugal underHenry the Navigator. TheCape of Good Hope was first reached byBartolomeu Dias on 12 March 1488, opening the importantsea route to India and theFar East, but European exploration ofAfrica 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 theNew World. Exploration of the interior of Africa was thus mostly left to theMuslim slave traders, who in tandem with theMuslim conquest of Sudan established far-reaching networks and supported the economy of a number ofSahelian 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 exploringSouthern Africa were made during the 1830s and 1840s, so that around the midpoint of the 19th century and the beginning of the colonialScramble for Africa, the unexplored parts were now limited to what would turn out to be theCongo Basin and theAfrican Great Lakes. This "Heart of Africa" remained one of the last remaining "blank spots" onworld maps of the later 19th century (alongside theArctic,Antarctic, and interior of theAmazon Basin). It was left for 19th-century European explorers, including those searching for the famedsources of the Nile, notablyJohn Hanning Speke,Richard Francis Burton,David Livingstone, andHenry 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 byOskar Lenz, to flesh out more detail such as the continent's geological makeup.
ThePhoenicians explored North Africa, establishing a number of colonies, the most prominent of which wasCarthage. 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 pharaohNecho II,c. 600 BC which took three years. A report of this expedition is provided byHerodotus (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 thespherical shape of the Earth found this impossible to believe. Some commentators took this circumstance as proof that the voyage is historical, but one scholar still dismisses 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 byHanno the Navigator in an expedition c. 500 BC.[2] The report of this voyage survives in a shortPeriplus 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 asSierra Leone,Guinea or evenGabon.[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 theAfri people who settled in the area of current-day Tunisia. TheRoman province of Africa spanned the Mediterranean coast of what is now Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. The parts of North Africa north of theSahara 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,Greek geographers were unaware that the landmass then known asLibya expanded south of the Sahara, assuming that the desert bounded on the outerOcean. Indeed,Alexander the Great, according toPlutarchus'Lives, considered sailing from the mouths of theIndus back to Macedonia passing south of Africa as a shortcut compared to the land route. EvenEratosthenes around 200 BC still assumed an extent of the landmass no further south than theHorn of Africa.
By the Roman imperial period, theHorn of Africa was well-known to Mediterranean geographers. The trading post ofRhapta, described as "the last marketplace ofAzania," may correspond to the coast ofTanzania. ThePeriplus of the Erythraean Sea, dated to the 1st century AD, appears to extend geographical knowledge further south, toSoutheast 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 theGulf of Guinea).[7]
Between 859 and 861, aViking fleet of 62 ships, led byHastein andBjörn Ironside sailed from theLoire to raid in theMediterranean, including North Africa.
From 1146 to 1148, theNorseman,Roger II of Sicily, established theKingdom of Africa.
In May 1291, theGenoese brothers,Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi, commanded the first known expedition in search of asea 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 discovered theCanary Islands.Lanzarote is named after him.
Jaume Ferrer sailed fromMajorca down theWest African coast to find the legendary "River of Gold" in 1346, but the outcome of his quest and his fate are unknown.
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Portuguese explorerPrince Henry, known asthe Navigator, was the first European to methodically explore Africa and the oceanic route to the Indies. From his residence in theAlgarve region of southern Portugal, he directed successive expeditions to circumnavigate Africa and reach India. In 1420, Henry sent an expedition to secure the uninhabited but strategic island ofMadeira. In 1425, he tried to secure theCanary Islands as well, but these were already under firm Castilian control. In 1431, another Portuguese expedition reached and annexed theAzores.
Naval charts of 1339 show that theCanary Islands were already known to Europeans. In 1341, Portuguese and Italian explorers prepared a joint expedition. In 1342 the Catalans organized an expedition captained byFrancesc Desvalers to theCanary Islands that set sail from Majorca. In 1344,Pope Clement VI named French admiralLuis de la CerdaPrince of Fortune, and sent him to conquer the Canaries. In 1402,Jean de Bethencourt andGadifer de la Salle sailed to conquer the Canary Islands but found them already plundered by theCastilians. Although they did conquer the isles, Bethencourt's nephew was forced to cede them to Castile in 1418.
In 1455 and 1456 two Italian explorers,Alvise Cadamosto fromVenice andAntoniotto Usodimare fromGenoa, together with an unnamed Portuguese captain and working for Prince Henry of Portugal, followed theGambia River, visiting the land ofSenegal, while another Italian sailor from Genoa,Antonio de Noli, also on behalf of Prince Henry, explored theBijagós islands, and, together with the PortugueseDiogo Gomes, theCape Verde archipelago.Antonio de Noli, who became the first governor of Cape Verde (and the first European colonial governor in Sub-Saharan Africa), is also considered the discoverer of the First Islands of Cape Verde.[8]
Along the western and eastern coasts of Africa, progress was also steady; Portuguese sailors reachedCape Bojador in 1434 andCape Blanco in 1441. In 1443, they built a fortress on the island ofArguin, in modern-dayMauritania, trading European wheat and cloth for African gold and slaves. It was the first time that the semi-mythicgold of the Sudan reached Europe without Muslim mediation. Most of the slaves were sent to Madeira, which became, after thorough deforestation, the first European plantation colony. Between 1444 and 1447, the Portuguese explored the coasts ofSenegal,Gambia, andGuinea. In 1456, the Venetian captain Alvise Cadamosto, under Portuguese command, explored the islands ofCape Verde. In 1462, two years after Prince Henry's death, Portuguese sailors explored theBissau islands and namedSerra Leoa (Lioness Mountains).
In 1469,Fernão Gomes rented the rights of African exploration for five years. Under his direction, in 1471, the Portuguese reached the village ofShama in modern dayGhana and named it and the surrounding regionA Mina (the mine). This name came from the abundance of gold that they discovered in the region and led to the Portuguese referring to the broader region as theCosta da Mina (Coast of the Mine). This name served as the basis for other European colonizers to refer to the region as theGold Coast.
In 1472,Fernão do Pó discovered the island that would bear his name for centuries (nowBioko) and an estuary abundant inshrimp (Portuguese:camarão,), giving its name toCameroon.
Soon after, theequator was crossed by Europeans. Portugal established a base inSāo Tomé that, after 1485, was settled with criminals. After 1497, expelled Spanish and Portuguese Jews were also sent there.
In 1482,Diogo Cão found the mouth of a large river and learned of the existence of a great kingdom,Kongo. In 1485, he explored the river upstream as well.
But the Portuguese wanted, above anything else, to find a route to India and kept trying tocircumnavigate Africa. In 1485, the expedition ofJoão Afonso d'Aveiros, with the German astronomerMartin of Behaim as part of the crew, explored theBight of Benin (Kingdom of Benin), returning information about African kingOgane.
In 1488,Bartolomeu Dias and his pilotPero de Alenquer, after putting down a mutiny, turned a cape where they were caught by a storm, naming it Cape of Storms. They followed the coast for a while realizing that it kept going eastward with even some tendency to the north. Lacking supplies, they turned around with the conviction that the far end of Africa had finally been reached. Upon their return to Portugal, the promising cape was renamedCape of Good Hope.
Some years later,Christopher Columbus landed in America under rival Castilian command.Pope Alexander VI decreed theInter caetera bull, dividing the non-Christian parts of the world between the two rival Catholic powers, Spain and Portugal.
Finally, in the years 1497 to 1498,Vasco da Gama, again with Alenquer as a pilot, took a direct route to Cape of Good Hope, viaSt. Helena. He went beyond the farthest point reached by Dias and named the countryNatal. Then he sailed northward, making land atQuelimane (Mozambique) andMombasa, where he foundChinese traders, andMalindi (both in modernKenya). In this town, he recruited an Arab pilot who led the Portuguese directly toCalicut. On 28 August 1498, KingManuel of Portugal informed the Pope of the good news that Portugal had reached India.
Egypt andVenice reacted to this news with hostility; from theRed Sea, they jointly attacked the Portuguese ships that traded with India. The Portuguese defeated these ships nearDiu in 1509. TheOttoman Empire's indifferent reaction to Portuguese exploration left Portugal in almost exclusive control of trade through theIndian Ocean.[citation needed] They established many bases along the eastern coast of Africa except for Somalia (See Ajuran-Portuguese wars). The Portuguese also capturedAden in 1513.
One of the ships under command ofDiogo Dias arrived at a coast that was not in East Africa. Two years later, a chart already showed an elongated island east of Africa that bore the nameMadagascar. But only a century later, between 1613 and 1619, did the Portuguese explore the island in detail. They signed treaties with local chieftains and sent the firstmissionaries, who found it impossible to make locals believe inHell, and were eventually expelled.[citation needed]
The Portuguese presence in Africa soon interfered with existing Arab trade interests.By 1583, the Portuguese established themselves inZanzibar and on theSwahili coast.TheKingdom of Congo wasconverted to Christianity in 1495, its king taking the name ofJoão I. The Portuguese also established their trade interests in theKingdom of Mutapa in the 16th century, and in 1629 placed a puppet ruler on the throne.
The Portuguese (and later also the Dutch) also became involved in the local slave economy, supporting the state of the Jaggas, who performed slave raids in the Congo.[citation needed]
They also used the Kongo to weaken the neighboring realm of theNdongo, where QueenNzinga put up a fierce but eventually doomed resistance to Portuguese and Jagga ambitions. Portugal intervened militarily in these conflicts, creating the basis for their colony ofAngola. In 1663, after another conflict, the royal crown of Kongo was sent toLisbon. Nevertheless, a diminished Kongo Kingdom would still exist until 1885, when the last Manicongo, Pedro V, ceded his almost non-existent domain to Portugal.
The Portuguese dealt with the other major state of Southern Africa, the Monomotapa (in modernZimbabwe), in a similar manner: Portugal intervened in a local war hoping to get abundant mineral riches, imposing a protectorate. But with the authority of the Monomotapa diminished by the foreign presence, anarchy took over. The local miners migrated and even buried the mines to prevent them from falling into Portuguese hands. When in 1693 the neighboringCangamires invaded the country, the Portuguese accepted their failure and retreated to the coast.
Beginning in the 17th century, the Netherlands began exploring and colonizing Africa. While the Dutch were waging along war of independence against Spain, Portugal had temporarily united with Spain, starting in 1580 and ending in 1640. As a result, the growing colonial ambitions of the Netherlands were mostly directed against Portugal.
For this purpose, two Dutch companies were founded: theWest Indies Company, with power over all the Atlantic Ocean, and theEast Indies Company, with power over the Indian Ocean.
The West India Company conquered Elmina in 1637 andLuanda in 1640. In 1648, they were expelled from Luanda by the Portuguese. Overall the Dutch built 16 forts in different places, includingGorée inSenegal, partly overtaking Portugal as the main slave-trading power. TheDutch Gold Coast andDutch Slave Coast were successful.
But in the colony ofDutch Loango-Angola, the Portuguese managed to expel the Dutch.
InDutch Mauritius the colonization started in 1638 and ended in 1710, with a brief interruption between 1658 and 1666. Numerous governors were appointed, but continuous hardships such as cyclones, droughts, pest infestations, lack of food, and illnesses finally took their toll, and the island was definitively abandoned in 1710.
The Dutch left a lasting impact inSouth Africa, a region ignored by Portugal that the Dutch eventually decided to use as a station in their route to East Asia.Jan van Riebeeck foundedCape Town in 1652, starting theEuropean exploration and colonization of South Africa.
Almost at the same time as the Dutch, other European colonial powers attempted to create their own outposts in West Africa, following in the footsteps of the Portuguese.
During theTudor period, Englishmerchant adventurers started trading in West Africa, coming into conflict with Portuguese troops. In 1581,Francis Drake reached the Cape of Good Hope. In 1660, theRoyal African Company was founded. In 1663, the English builtFort James inGambia. One year later, another English colonial expedition attempted to settle southern Madagascar, resulting in the death of most of the colonists. The English forts on the West African coast were eventually taken by the Dutch.
In 1626, the FrenchCompagnie de l'Occident was created. This company expelled the Dutch fromSenegambia (Senegal), making it the first French domain in Africa. They also conquered the island ofArguin.[citation needed]
France also set her eyes on Madagascar, the island that had been used since 1527 as a stop in travels to India. In 1642, the French East India Company founded a settlement in southern Madagascar calledFort Dauphin. The commercial results of this settlement were scarce and, again, most of the settlers died. One of the survivors,Etienne de Flacourt, published aHistory of the Great Island of Madagascar and Relations, which was for a long time the main European source of information about the island. Further settlement attempts had no more success but, in 1667,François Martin led the first expedition to the Malagasy heartland, reachingLake Alaotra. In 1665, France officially claimed Madagascar, under the name of Île Dauphine. However, little colonial activity would take place in Madagascar until the 19th century.
In 1651, theDuchy of Courland and Semigallia (a vassal of thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) gained a colony in Africa onSt. Andrew's Island at theGambia River and established the Jacob Fort there. The Duchy also took other local lands including St. Mary Island (modern-dayBanjul) andFort Jillifree.
In 1650,Swedish merchants foundedSwedish Gold Coast in modern Ghana following the foundation of theSwedish Africa Company (1649). In 1652 the foundations were laid of the fort Carlsborg. In 1658 Fort Carlsborg was seized and made part of theDanish Gold Coast colony, then to theDutch Gold Coast. Later on the local population started a successful uprising against their new masters and in December 1660 the King of theAkan people subgroup-Efutu again offeredSweden control over the area, but in 1663 were seized by theDanish after a longdefense ofFort Christiansborg.
TheDano-Norwegian colonized theDanish Gold Coast, from 1674 to 1755 the settlements were administered by theDanish West India-Guinea Company. From December 1680 to 29 August 1682, the Portuguese occupied Fort Christiansborg. In 1750 it was made a Danishcrown colony. From 1782 to 1785 it was under British occupation. From 1814 it was made part of the territory ofDenmark.
In 1677, KingFrederick William I of Prussia sent an expedition to the western coast of Africa. The commander of the expedition, Captain Blonk, signed agreements with the chieftains of the Gold Coast. There, the Prussians built a fort namedGross Friederichsburg and restored the abandoned Portuguese fort of Arguin. But in 1720, the king decided to sell these bases to the Netherlands for 7,000ducats and 12 slaves, six of them chained with pure gold chains.
In 1777, theSpanish Empire andPortuguese Empire signed theTreaty of San Ildefonso in whichPortugal give the islands of Annobón and Fernando Poo in waters of theGulf of Guinea, as well as theGuinean coast between theNiger River and theOgooué River, toSpain.
The British expressed their interest by the formation in 1788 ofThe Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa. The individuals who formed this club were inspired in part by the ScotsmanJames Bruce, who had ventured toEthiopia in 1769 and reached the source of theBlue Nile.
Overall, the European exploration of Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries was very limited. Instead, they were focused on theslave trade, which only required coastal bases and items to trade. The real exploration of the African interior would start well into the 19th century.
Although theNapoleonic Wars distracted the attention of Europe from exploratory work in Africa, those wars nevertheless exercised great influence on the future of the continent, both in Egypt and South Africa. The occupation of Egypt (1798–1803), first by France and then by Great Britain, resulted in an effort by theOttoman Empire to regain direct control over that country. In 1811,Mehemet Ali established an almost independent state, and from 1820 onward established Egyptian rule over eastern Sudan. In South Africa, the struggle with Napoleon caused the United Kingdom to take possession of the Dutch settlements at the Cape. In 1814, Cape Colony, which had been continuously occupied by British troops since 1806, was formally ceded to the British crown.
Meanwhile, considerable changes had been made in other parts of the continent. The occupation ofAlgiers by France in 1830 put an end to the piracy of theBarbary states. Egyptian authority continued to expand southward, with the consequent additions to knowledge of theNile. The city ofZanzibar, on the island of that name, rapidly attained importance. Accounts of a vast inland sea, and the discovery of the snow-clad mountains ofKilimanjaro in 1840–1848, stimulated the desire for further knowledge about Africa in Europe.
In the mid-19th century,Protestant missions were carrying on active missionary work on the Guinea coast, in South Africa and in the Zanzibar dominions. Missionaries visited little-known regions and peoples, and in many instances became explorers and pioneers of trade and empire.David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary, had been engaged since 1840 in work north of theOrange River. In 1849, Livingstone crossed theKalahari Desert from south to north and reachedLake Ngami. Between 1851 and 1856, he traversed the continent from west to east, discovering the great waterways of the upperZambezi River. In November 1855, Livingstone became the first European to see the famousVictoria Falls, named afterthe Queen of the United Kingdom. From 1858 to 1864, the lower Zambezi, theShire River andLake Nyasa were explored by Livingstone. Nyasa had been first reached by the confidential slave ofAntónio da Silva Porto, a Portuguese trader established atBié in Angola, who crossed Africa during 1853–1856 from Benguella to the mouth of the Rovuma. A prime goal for explorers was to locate the source of the River Nile. Expeditions by Burton and Speke (1857–1858) and Speke and Grant (1863) locatedLake Tanganyika andLake Victoria. It was eventually proved to be the latter from which the Nile flowed.
Henry Morton Stanley, who had in 1871 succeeded in finding and succouring Livingstone (originating the famous line "Dr. Livingstone, I presume"), started again for Zanzibar in 1874. Inone of the most memorable of all exploring expeditions in Africa, Stanley circumnavigated Victoria Nyanza (Lake Victoria) and Lake Tanganyika. Striking farther inland to the Lualaba, he followed that river down to the Atlantic Ocean—which he reached in August 1877—and proved it to be the Congo.
In 1895, theBritish South Africa Company hired the American scoutFrederick Russell Burnham to look for minerals and ways to improve river navigation in the central and southern Africa region. Burnham oversaw and led theNorthern Territories British South Africa Exploration Company expedition that first established that major copper deposits existed north of theZambezi inNorth-Eastern Rhodesia. Along theKafue River, Burnham saw many similarities to copper deposits he had worked in the United States, and he encountered native peoples wearing copper bracelets.[9] Copper rapidly became the primary export of Central Africa and it remains essential to the economy even today.
The emergence of modern cartography, and placing it at the heart of the approach to scientific exploration, meant that a new drive to explore Africa began in Europe, particularly Britain. John Barrow, undersecretary to the Admiralty in the early 1800s, described British knowledge of the African continent as "retrograded" and "almost blank", and pushed for further explorations of the continent.[10] This cartographic approach "emptied African space of prior political and ethnic identifications" in Europeans' eyes.[11]
Explorers were also active in Southern Morocco, the Sahara and the Sudan, which were traversed in many directions between 1860 and 1875 byGeorg Schweinfurth andGustav Nachtigal.[12] These travellers not only added considerably to geographical knowledge, but obtained invaluable information concerning the people, languages and natural history of the countries in which they sojourned. Among the discoveries of Schweinfurth was one that confirmed Greek legends of the existence beyond Egypt of a "pygmy race". But the first western discoverer of the pygmies of Central Africa wasPaul Du Chaillu, who found them in the Ogowe district of the west coast in 1865, five years before Schweinfurth's first meeting with them. Du Chaillu had previously, through journeys in the Gabon region between 1855 and 1859, made popular in Europe the knowledge of the existence of the gorilla, whose existence was thought to be as legendary as that of the Pygmies of Aristotle.
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Diogo CãoDiogo de Azambuja
Bartolomeu DiasPero de AlenquerJoão InfanteJoão GregoÁlvaro MartinsPero DiasGil EanesNuno TristãoAntão GonçalvesDinis DiasÁlvaro FernandesPero de SintraFernão do PóAlvise Cadamosto (Venetian born)António de Noli (Genoese born)Diogo GomesÁlvaro CaminhaJoão de SantarémPedro EscobarDuarte Pacheco PereiraLopes Gonçalves (and Atlantic Ocean)
Vasco da Gama (and discovered sea route to India)Diogo Dias (andIndian Ocean, discoveredMadagascar)Pero da Covilhã (15th/16th century diplomat and explorer inEthiopia)Pedro Álvares Cabral (discovered Brazil, explored India along the African coast)Sancho de Tovar and Vicente Pegado among others (also among the first Europeans ever to contemplate and to describe the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, then referred to by the Portuguese as Monomotapa)..svg)
Paulo Dias de Novais António Fernandes (he travalled to Monomotapa and beyond, exploring most of the present day Zimbabwe and possibly northeastern South Africa)[13]Lourenço Marques (trader and explorer in East Africa)Francisco Álvares (missionary and explorer in Ethiopia)Gonçalo da Silveira (jesuit missionary, travalled up the Zambezi River to the capital of the Monomotapa which appears to have been the N'Pande kraal, close by the M'Zingesi River, a southern tributary of the Zambezi)
Francisco de Lacerda (explorer inZambia)
Mungo Park (explored Niger River in 1790s)
Maurice Benyovszky (1746–1786) Explored Madagascar
Antoine Thomson d'Abbadie (1810–1897) (Irish born), explored Ethiopia
Heinrich BarthPierre Savorgnan de Brazza (Italian born)
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt
Frederick Russell Burnham (1861–1947), an American explorer of south, west, central, and east Africa.Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) (African Great Lakes)René Caillié
Hermenegildo CapeloRoberto IvensCandido José da Costa Cardoso (visited Lake Malawi [also known as Lake Nyasa or Lake Niassa] in 1846)
Paul Du ChailluHugh Clapperton (1788–1827), explored west and central AfricaVictor de Compiègne (1846–1877), explored GabonDixon Denham (1786–1828), explored west central Africa.James Frederic Elton (1840–1877)
Emil HolubIgnatius Knoblecher (1819–1858), explored the White Nile basinAlexander Gordon Laing (1793–1826)Macgregor Laird (1808–1861)Richard Lemon Lander (1804–1834)Harry Johnston (1858–1927)Frederick John Jackson (1860–1929), explored Uganda
Oskar Lenz (1848–1925), expeditions in 1879–80 (trans-Sahara) and 1885–87 (Congo)David Livingstone (1813–1873)John Kirk (1832–1922)Frederick Lugard (1858–1945)Joseph Thomson (1858–1895) (African Great Lakes)Samuel Baker (1821–1893) (exploredUganda andthe Sudan)Arthur Henry Neumann (1850–1907) (explored what has since becomeKenya andUganda)Charles-Henri Pobéguin (1856–1951), explored French Africa
Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti (1855–1926)Carlo PiaggiaSerpa Pinto (soldier and colonizer of Africa)António da Silva Porto
Manuel Iradier (1854–1911) (Explorer of Equatorial Guinea)Vittorio Bottego (1860–1897)Giuseppe Maria Giulietti (1847–1881)Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi (1873–1933)Georg Schweinfurth (Latvian born)Frederick Courtney Selous (1851–1917)Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) (Welsh born)William Edgar Geil (1 October 1865, Doylestown, Pennsylvania – 11 April 1925, Venice)John Hanning Speke (1827–1864) (discovered the source of theNile)James Hingston Tuckey (1776–1816) (Irish born)Robert Bruce Napoleon Walker (1832–1901), exploredGabon as a trader for Hatton & CooksonSámuel Teleki (1845–1916) Explored Northern KenyaLudwig von Höhnel (1857–1942) Explored Kenya
