Gordon Cremonesi first edition - 1977
From the fanaticism of Savonarola to that of Mungo Park - two books about obsessives; but very different in intent. The former was all about the purified soul (which did lead him into political storms), the latter about physical endurance and the desire to 'know'. Park was a Lowland Scot, born on 10th September 1771, the third son and seventh child of an industrious farmer. Schooled at Selkirk Grammar School, he went up in 1789 to Edinburgh University to continue medical studies. He travelled down to London in 1791 and met, through his brother-in-law James Dickson, Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society and the leading light in the African Association. The group's interest came to focus on West Africa - the land mass south of the Sahara and north of the Kalahari remained almost totally mysterious. Stories of imperial organisation and steady trade mingled with rumours of religious sacrifices, cannibalism, feud, revolt, Islamic intransigence and tyrannous cruelties. Above all, there was the mystery of the Niger. Previous explorers, such as Major Houghton, had died trying to solve the river's mystery. On 23rd July 1794, a two-man committee of the African Association passed a resolution: That Mr. Mungo Park having offered his Services to the Association as a Geographical Missionary to the interior countries of Africa; and appearing to the Committee to be well qualified for the Undertaking, his offer be accepted.
On 21st June 1795, Park was on the Endeavour when it dropped anchor in the Gambia estuary. The next six chapters deal with the myriad of trials and tribulations he faced, before he landed back at Falmouth on 22nd December 1797. The author makes a pretty good stab at describing the ordeals that Park faced (using as his main source Park's Journal of a Mission to the Interior Parts of Africa, published in 1815) - hunger, sickness, capture by native kings and often facing potential death, beset by Islamic fundamentalism. The man must have had almost superhuman fortitude. He did get to the Niger - near Segu (I found the frontispiece map virtually useless, the biggest debit concerning the book) - I saw with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission - the long sought for majestic Niger, glittering to the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly to the eastward...I lifted up my fervent thanks in prayer to the Great Ruler of all things, for having thus far crowned my endeavours with success. But he had to turn back, still some 250 miles upriver from Timbuctu, another of his aims. The weather had turned and he had virtually nothing left to keep him going. Hostility surrounded him as he made his return.
On his return, he gave his Report to Banks and the African Association, journeyed to Scotland, where he married Alice (Ailie) Anderson on 2nd August 1799. For two years, Park 'vanishes'. He makes friends with Professor Adam Ferguson, Dugald Stewart and Sir Walter Scott. But he is restless, finding his work as a country doctor monotonous. Banks and others had not given up on their dream and by May 1804, Park was convinced he would be returning to Scotland, notwithstanding a wife and by now three children. This second voyage would be very different from the first. What had been a private venture financed by gentlemen, patriotic certainly, but curious above all, had now become an act of state. The France of Napoleon was considered a danger not just in the Channel but everywhere. Britain must 'win' in West Africa!
On 27th April 1805, Park set off again for the Niger, this time with soldiers and others. Now he travelled like a seigneur, a sort of nobleman, with outriders, guides, servants, guards; an entourage. He came like a plenipotentiary, a representative of power, uniforms and muskets behind him; he came, in fact, like a conqueror. The story is one of death, as the band gradually diminished. Nothing would stop Mungo Park now except his own death; every other man in his company might fall or desert, might buckle and collapse and, sweating, die, but he would continue, inexorably committed to what had become the single, particular purpose of his life. But, by the time he reached the Niger again, (taking 16 weeks, not the planned six), three-quarters of his soldiers had died. Only five were left to make the attempt to follow the Niger's course; 44 men had marched, happy, indifferent or drunk, from the Gambia estuary eight months before. And then they were down to two. Was it his single-mindedness that finally destroyed Park? Was it his determination not to stop that aroused legitimate hostility in those who lived, at least in part, off the duty they levied from river traffic? The manner of Park's death is still argued over today; that it happened is the only sure fact. The author suggests he died after jumping into the river from his canoe, to escape the hostile natives on the shore. We simply don't know. The news was received by Banks in 1810.
The two key chapters which convey best the author's attitude to Western (white) imperialism are 6. A Necessary Reappraisal and 13. The Colonial Consequence. Here are some extracts from them.
It seems to me that the story of European exploration, particularly in Africa and Asia, was based on a single monstrous assumption: that reality is limited by the powers of Western observation. What the black man or the brown man may have seen, the native of the country and perfectly clear in his witness, was taken to have no validity. An "explorer" was needed, a white man, a stranger - by no means always trained in the skills and technology of scientific observation - whole verification alone could bring this or that natural phenomenon into the orbit of what truly existed.
It was rarely the explorers (Burton was a major exception, as was Stanley, and the unspeakable Speke) who found the men and women among whom they travelled negligible, certainly not until the senseless patriotism and racial self-satisfaction that afflicted whites in the second half of the nineteenth century.
It was not the simple morality of fire-power that persuaded the Western nations of their right to colonise: it was their collective conviction of racial superiority.
Thus we come back to Mungo Park. For in the great body of Africa he was the first, the earliest of those magnificent travellers who, criss-crossing the continent, put on it the stamp of European ownership. In their wake came the men with Bibles and the men with guns, the traders, the educators, the administrators, the whole gallery of exploiters intent on shaping what they found either in their own image or for their own needs. And, of them all, Mungo Park was the first...it is he who carries with him, who represents, that overwhelming Western passion - the desire to know.
Mungo Park carried with him the whole gallery of ideological arrogance and careless self-indulgence that was to mark so much of Europe's dealings with the world.
Explorers were, of course, not typical at all, but rather eccentric, single-minded almost to madness, their ambition often built upon an implacability so extreme that in almost any other context it must have seemed unbearable. They were a tiny and obsessed group, survivors through diplomacy and toughness, their curiosity both meticulous and insatiable.
There was another element in Mungo Park...a romantic heat deep below the controlled surface...it was in this private element, surely, that the roots of his obsession with the Niger lay. He had, one senses, personalised his struggle with that great river. Its secret was its treasure, its own length the guardian dragon, he the knight who would filch that gold and carry it home. Only death would prevent his success. In the end [that passion] overwhelmed him. It drew him from his wife and children, it hurried him on through sickness and disaster, it drove him out on that river in a patched-up canoe with only the tattered remnants of his party about him. Finally, it killed him.
Mungo Park (1771-1806)
