1770s–1880s: (The Age of African Exploration — James Bruce’s Quest for the Nile Source in the 1770s, Mungo Park Tracing the Niger in the 1790s, Denham and Cl…

1770s–1880s: (The Age of African Exploration — James Bruce’s Quest for the Nile Source in the 1770s, Mungo Park Tracing the Niger in the 1790s, Denham and Clapperton Reaching Sokoto in 1824, the 1841 Niger Expedition Disaster, Quinine Enabling Baikie’s 1854 Success, Livingstone Crossing the Continent in the Mid-1850s, Burton and Speke at Lake Tanganyika, Speke and Grant at the Source of the White Nile, and Stanley Charting the Congo for King Leopold): European explorers were preceded by centuries of Arab travelers who left invaluable first-hand accounts. The professional explorer only became prominent in the latter half of the eighteenth century. James Bruce’s quest for the Nile source in Ethiopia and Sudan in the 1770s was followed by a sequence of West African explorers concerned with the Niger. Mungo Park, under the African Association, attempted to trace the Niger in the 1790s and died on a return trip in 1806. Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney journeyed south from Tripoli and reached Sokoto in 1824. In 1841, a British government expedition up the Niger to explore commercial opportunities ended in disaster, with some fifty Britons dying of malaria. The discovery that quinine offered protection greatly quickened exploration from the 1850s, demonstrated by Baikie’s 1854 Niger expedition. Between the 1850s and 1870s, the Niger was joined in the pantheon of geographical discoveries by the Nile, Zambezi, and Congo. Livingstone crossed the continent from Luanda to the Zambezi in the mid-1850s. Burton and Speke reached Lake Tanganyika, while Speke and Grant located the source of the White Nile at Lake Victoria. Stanley, funded by King Leopold, charted the Congo rivers and demonstrated the commercial possibilities of the Congo basin on the eve of the Scramble. Legitimate commerce lay at the core of these quests, requiring far greater knowledge than the slave trade had demanded.