Explorers, Guides and the Mapping of Africa

In the mid-19th century, European explorers set out to map Africa's interior, often funded by geographic societies and newspapers. Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke reached Lake Tanganyika in 1858, and Speke identified Lake Victoria as a source of the Nile. David Livingstone crossed southern Africa and reached the great falls he named Victoria Falls in 1855, known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya.

When Livingstone lost contact with Europe, the New York Herald sent Henry Morton Stanley, who found him at Ujiji in 1871; Stanley later traced the Congo River to the Atlantic between 1874 and 1877. These journeys depended entirely on African guides, porters, interpreters and local knowledge, though European accounts often hid that fact. Exploration was not neutral: the maps, reports and treaties explorers produced gave European governments and companies the information and claims they used during the Scramble.