The Gates of Africa: Death, Discovery, and the Search for Timbuktu

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

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

A truly compelling and rivetting tale of the early exploration of Africa. By "early" I mean the previously little documented period of 1788-1830, prior to which virtually nothing was known of Africa's interior probably because almost all earlier travellers perished from thirst, starvation, disease, and hostile natives - most dangerous of all were the dreaded "Moors", whose self-proclaimed desert hospitality was invariably suspended whenever helpless and starving white explorers sought their compassion. Virtually all the explorers sponsored by the African Association died on their journeys but decadent 21st century man must surely marvel at the incredible degree of honour and sense of duty possessed by these intrepid late 18th/early 19th century gentleman explorers.

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.