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The Gates of Africa: Death, Discovery, and the Search for Timbuktu, by Anthony Sattin
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London, 1788: a group of British gentlemen---geographers, scholars, politicians, humanitarians, and traders---decide it is time to solve the mysteries of Africa's unknown interior regions. Inspired by the Enlightenment quest for knowledge, they consider it a slur on the age that the interior of Africa still remains a mystery, that maps of the "dark continent" are populated with mythical beasts, imaginary landmarks, and fabled empires. As well, they hoped that more accurate knowledge of Africa would aid in the abolition of the slave trade.
These men, a mixed group of soldiers and gentlemen, ex-convicts, and social outcasts, form the African Association, the world's first geographical society, and over several decades send hardened, grizzled adventurers to replace speculation with facts and remove the beasts from the maps. The explorers who ventured forth included Mungo Park, whose account of his travels would be a bestseller for more than a century; American John Ledyard; and Jean Louis Burckhardt, the discoverer of Petra and Abu Simbel. Their exploits would include grueling crossings of the Sahara, the exploration of the Nile, and---most dramatically---the search for the great River Niger and its legendary city of gold: Timbuktu.
Anthony Sattin weaves the plotting of the London gentlemen and the experiences of their extraordinary explorers into a gripping account of high adventure, international intrigue, and geographical discovery. The Gates of Africa is a story of human courage and fatal ambition, a groundbreaking insight into the struggle to reveal the secrets of Africa.
- Sales Rank: #1794077 in Books
- Published on: 2005-01-01
- Released on: 2004-12-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 10.20" h x 1.36" w x 5.92" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 416 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Journalist and travel writer Sattin (The Pharaoh's Shadow, etc.) pens a remarkable history of the African Association, the world's first geographical society. Formed in London in 1788 by wealthy patrons who believed that Africa needed to be explored and mapped more fully, the Association aimed to find the fabled city of Timbuktu, discover the course of the Niger and locate the source of the Nile. Using a wealth of historical and biographical materials, Sattin provides exciting-and sometimes ironic-accounts of the amazing and often doomed travels of extraordinary adventurers supported by the Association, including Mungo Park, the first European to find the Niger; Gordon Laing, who reached Timbuktu after being shot by a local tribesman only to find that the city was in shambles; and Jean Louis Burckhardt, who became fluent in Arabic and who, disguised as Ibrahim ibn Abdullah, became one of the first Europeans to journey to Mecca and the first since the Crusades to see the ancient city of Petra. Sattin delivers a lively and fascinating study of the Association, about which little has been previously written, and shows how the achievements of the men and their missions not only expanded the knowledge of Africa, but also left a "lasting legacy" in the fields of exploration and geographical investigation.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
As the predecessor of the distinguished and internationally renowned Royal Geographic Society, the African Association's significance has been minimized in the annals of African exploration and geography. Founded in 1788 by a handful of scientists, explorers, and entrepreneurs, the African Association was responsible for commissioning expeditions to investigate heretofore-uncharted sectors of the African interior. This fascinating narrative reaches back in time, breathing new life into the forward-thinking men who established the association and the intrepid adventurers who undertook a series of dangerous, exhilarating missions in the name of progress. As an interesting sidebar, the African Association's staunch opposition to the slave trade is also documented. Historians, geographers, and armchair travelers will be captivated by this irresistible combination of adventure, intrigue, and heroism. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"An extraordinary panorama of adventure, scholarship, and intellectual enterprise."
- Jan Morris, author of Venice and Manhattan '45
"Elegantly told, richly researched, and profoundly moving."
- Adam Nicolson, The Daily Telegraph
"Absorbing, highly readable and in places ironically humorous... A well-rounded and definitive study."
- Martin Booth, The Sunday Times
"An important, pioneering, and extremely entertaining contribution to the history of travel."
- Justin Marozzi, Literary Review
"Sattin has excelled himself."
- Condé Nast Traveller
"This is the stuff of which ripping yarns are made---and Anthony Sattin has certainly written one here."
- Geographical Magazine
"The Gates of Africa tells a story that has never been adequately told before and does so with style and scholarship. A remarkable story told remarkably well."
- Andrew Gouldie, The Times Higher Education Supplement
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Exploration of Africa in the late 18th and early 19th century
By Utah Blaine
It may be surprising to some (it was certainly surprising to me) that less was known about the interior of Africa at the turn of the 18th century than was known about the New World or the South Pacific. The coast around Africa had been heavily explored (and exploited) by Europeans, but virtually nothing was known about the interior. This book details the attempts by individuals and small groups to penetrate, map, and detail truth from reality about the interior of Africa during the late 18th and early 18th century. Various scholars, adventure seekers, and glory hunters tried to cross the Sahara and penetrate northern Africa to find the legendary city of Timbuktu, the source of the Niger, and new possibilities for trade to bypass the Moorish middlemen. Some tried by starting in Egypt and heading west, others by starting in (or around) Gambia and trekking east. Virtually all of them died in the attempt.
There is a lot to like in this book. It uncovers a fascinating and totally unknown (to me at least, probably to many others) era of history. While Bonaparte was stomping around Europe, a small group of scholars was actively engaged in trying to learn more about their world, in spite of the upheaval in Europe. Joseph Banks and some of his wealthy comrades in England would regularly commission various individuals and groups to attempt to penetrate Africa to find Timbuktu and the source of the Niger. The goals were nominally scientific - to ascertain the position of various landmarks, rumored cities, etc., but as the expeditions failed and the situation in Europe changed, the goals evolved to become more economic and geo-political. Roughly 40% of this book is effectively a travelogue in which the exploits of the various explorers is recounted. In some cases the journals of these explorers has survived and Sattin has reconstructed the tales of their adventures. It would have taken some big cojones to attempt what some of these brave (foolish?) men did.
There are several reasons why I only give this work four stars. First, roughly 60% of the book covers the political machinations of Joseph Banks and his cronies. This is important to the story, but I wanted to read more about Africa, not about wealthy Londoners. Too much time is spent in London. I wanted to learn more about the explorers, the people and wildlife and terrain in Africa, etc. and less about Banks and crew. Second, this isn't the kind of book most people are going to need to add to their collection. It is now out of print as I write this review (26JUL09), but I wouldn't spend my money again to buy it. Definitely readable, but as a relatively expensive hardback, not really collectible. I won't be returning to it again and again. Third, the ending is really disappointing. Someone finally makes it across the country, and that's it. There were lots of loose threads that could really have been tied up together, and the narrative could have been taken a bit further. It was almost as if Sattin just got tired of writing and ended the story at a convenient point.
Bottom line is that this is a good read for anyone interested in Africa and the age of exploration, but not a uniquely outstanding book.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A lively and engrossing atmosphere of adventure & discovery
By Midwest Book Review
In 1899 in London a group of geographers, scholars, and traders decided it was time to solve Africa's mysteries: they formed the African Association, the world's first geographical society, and several over decades sent adventurers to explore the 'dark continent'. These early adventurers were to change the image and shape of Africa, and Anthony Sattin describes their journeys of adventure in The Gates Of Africa, lending a lively and engrossing atmosphere of adventure and discovery to the account. Sattin is a journalist and broadcaster who himself has traveled extensively over the region in which the early African Association operated: his personal familiarity with the area lends Gates Of Africa an additional air of authority.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
More death than discovery
By Roman Nies
This book makes a good compilation of the exploration efforts to find a way to Timbuktu, elucidate the geographic realities in Western Africa with the three big rivers Gambia, Senegal and first of all the Niger. This is also the story of the African Association and the biographies of some courageous and gifted men who did not fear death to make an achievement that must deem as under-ambitious today, but would have secured them imperishable fame and place in the annals of the discoveries of the world. Instead most of them didn`t even make it to a burial in Westminster Abbey, rather in an unknown sand pit.
The author knows to develop entertaining excitement, but apparently failed to keep to it all the end, loosing the last breath to write down what and who finally brought the knowledge the explorers in West Africa were out for. For the successful explorers the author has only a few pages left. Maybe he felt it was time to finish the report. Caillié, who was the first to make it to Timbuktu and back to tell his story, was not commissioned by the African Association. Notwithstanding he should have been honoured with a little more observance.
North Africa and the greatest part of the West was muslim country. The Arabs dominated the trade and kept the black Africans under the threat of their slavery marketing. Their manners were mostly not at all civilized which made travelling for western people, notably Christians a risky affair.
Interestingly the author states on the last pages as for the difficulties of the explorers in obtaining the aimed for goals in 30 and more years of trials, that the greatest obstacles over the course of several missions and several deaths had proved to be neither climate, nor black natives nor even disease, no, it were the Moors, Muslims all, and Arab intermediaries between Europe and black Africa. But this idea came to the reader already long before the author mentioned it. So long is the list of the mistreatments by the rulers and controllers of the area. Muslims treated foreign travellers, especially suspected Christians between the Atlantic ocean and the Red sea, between the Gulf of Benin and the Mediterranean Sea not friendly, as the legend often tells, but regularly hostile, with a few exceptions. Either their company could not be trusted, so that caravans must be avoided by the explorers or journeys postponed, or they started from the beginning of the encounter to show how they wanted to deal with the Christians. Not amusing or healthy. Thus this forced the later travellers to learn fluent Arabic, disguise themselves as muslim traders or pilgrims. But even then they lost their lives after a always bewildering long ordeal of travel or hold out. The hardships over years can not be relived, even not - I presume - in an Egyptian or west-African prison of today. The travelling conditions of the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century in Africa cannot in the least be compared to that what we find today, even if we prefer to do it the camel way.
This book is also a homage to the African Association which made great advances in geography, launched some of the first truly scientific geographical expeditions, established a model for the Romantic explorer, paved the way for new commercial ties and helped create what remains one of the world`s foremost societies for geography and exploration. The great age of African exploration may have peaked in the second half of the nineteenth century, but it began in June 1788, when Sir Joseph Banks and the other members of the Saturday`s Club sat down to dinner at the St. Alban`s Tavernt.
For all who want to revive imaginative the exploration of Western Africa and want to make their own special way to Timbuktu this book should be the right introduction.
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