The Penetration of Africa

In 1750, most of the interior of Africa was unknown to Europeans. By 1830 a large part of the northern half of Africa had been visited and described by European explorers. First published in 1965, The Penetration of Africa, which is based in part on hitherto unpublished material, traces the exciting story of this movement of penetration and attempts to set it in the perspective both of European and of African history.

The complicated pattern of the states and peoples of Northern and Western Africa in the eighteenth century, the extent of European knowledge, the growing movement of European interest in Africa encouraged by the activities of businessmen, scholars, and humanitarians, the foundation and activities of the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, the first signs of European imperialism appearing at the end of the eighteenth century—these form the main themes of this volume which carries the movement up to the year 1815.