Unlike Livingstone, Stanley was motivated by fame and fortune. He travelled in large, well-armed expeditions. He had 200 porters on his expedition to find Livingstone, and often travelled with only a few bearers. Stanley's second expedition set off from Zanzibar towards Lake Victoria, which he sailed around in his boat, the Lady Alice, and then headed into Central Africa towards Nyangwe and the Congo (Zaire) River. He followed this for some 3,220 kilometres from its tributaries to the sea, reaching Boma in August 1877. He then returned to Central Africa to find Emin Pasha, a German explorer believed to be in danger from warring cannibals.
Mary Kingsley (1862 - 1900) was educated at home where she learned the rudiments of natural history from her adventurous and well-travelled father and his extensive library. He had spent most of his life accompanying noblemen around the world, keeping diaries and notes which he hoped to later publish. He employed a tutor to teach his daughter German so that she could help him translate scientific papers. His comparative study of sacrificial rites around the world was his major passion and it was Mary's desire to complete this work after her parents' deaths in 1892, within six weeks of each other. This task took her to West Africa. Her two journeys there were not remarkable for their geological exploration, but were remarkable for being undertaken, by her, a sheltered, middle-class, Victorian spinster in her thirties with no knowledge of African languages or French, with very little money (she arrived in West Africa with only £300) and alone. Kingsley did however collect specimens for science, including a new fish which was named after her. She died nursing prisoners of war in Simon's Town (Cape Town) during the Anglo-Boer War. (Source: BBC World Service)
* It is now generally accepted that the true source of the Nile is in fact the Rukarara River in Nyungwe Forest, Rwanda.
The Scramble for Africa
During the late 1800s, exploration was combined with conquest, and Europeans became the rulers of most of the African continent. Until the 19th century the French had played a smaller role in Africa than the British, but their defeat in the Napoleonic Wars made them look to Africa to extend their influence. North Africa became a theatre for Anglo-French rivalry that nearly brought the two countries to the brink of war in southern Sudan. There were few French explorers but there was a growing interest in using North Africa to play the Germans off against the British. It was this that triggered what became known as the "Scramble for Africa".
Britain tried not to play a part in this early scramble, being more of a trading empire rather than a colonial empire; however, it soon became clear it had to gain its own African empire to maintain the balance of power.
By the end of the century the French had conceived a type of colonial rule which was highly centralised and made little effort to involve local rulers. This contrasted with the British colonial style which, in northern Nigeria, took the form of indirect rule through the local Emirs and chiefs.
Despite the missionaries and the search for new trading outlets, Europeans in the first eighty years of the 19th century were not driven by any desire to rule and administer Africa. Leading African merchants worked on equal terms with European traders in the 1860s, and even enjoyed the attention of Queen Victoria.
In the second half of the 19th century the piecemeal patchwork of alliances, trading colonies, protectorates and understandings, yielded to sweeping changes imposed by the Europeans. No longer content with improvising as they went along, the British and the French were determined to put things in order and establish a clear administrative hierarchy with Europeans at the top and Africans below.
Meanwhile, some of the oldest trading nations in Europe abandoned Africa and new players emerged. The Dutch and Danes left the continent whereas Germany, Italy and Belgium moved in.
Elsewhere, the mineral wealth of the continent fixated and dazzled European adventurers. Soon casual commercial dealings were replaced by systematic exploitation and control. At the beginning of the 19th century the European grasp of African geography was confined mainly to the coast, but by the end of the century Europeans were straddling the continent with railways and roads. Now it was possible for them to take control - politically and commercially.
Paradoxically, Britain, the staunch advocate of free trade, emerged, prior to WW1, with not only the largest overseas empire due to its long-standing presence in India, but also the greatest gains in the "Scramble for Africa", reflecting its advantageous position at its inception. Between 1885 and 1914 Britain controlled nearly 30% of Africa's population, compared to 15% for France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and 1% for Italy.
The “Scramble for Africa” had the effect of defusing and displacing tensions between the European powers. Eventually however, the trade-offs and alliances could not disguise the fact that Imperial Germany was on a collision course with Britain and France. This interaction soon disintegrated into the chaos, death and destruction of World War I.
Although Britain emerged among the war's victors, and its rule expanded into new areas, the heavy costs of the war undermined its capacity to maintain the vast empire. The British had suffered millions of casualties and liquidated assets at an alarming rate. This led to debt accumulation, upending of capital markets and manpower deficiencies in the staffing of far-flung imperial posts in Asia and the African colonies. Nationalist sentiment grew in both old and new Imperial territories, fuelled in part by having participated as Empire troops in the war.
The rise of anti-colonial nationalist movements in the subject territories and the changing economic situation of the world in the first half of the 20th century challenged an imperial power now increasingly preoccupied with issues nearer home. The Empire's end began with the onset of the Second World War, when a deal was reached between the British government and the leaders of the Indian independence movement. In this deal the Indians would co-operate and remain loyal during the war, after which they would be granted independence. Following India's lead, nearly all of Britain's other colonies would become independent over the next two decades.
The end of the Empire gathered speed after Britain's efforts during World War II left the country all but exhausted and found its former allies disinclined to support the colonial status quo. The Empire was increasingly regarded as an unnecessary drain on public finances by politicians and civil servants, if not by the general public.
World War II can be best described as a pyrrhic victory to the British Empire. The economic costs of WWII were far greater for the British Empire than those of WWI. Britain was heavily bombed and the war cost the Empire almost its entire merchant fleet. World War II fatally undermined Britain's already weakened commercial and financial leadership and heightened the importance of the Dominions (British overseas territories including Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and the United States as a source of military assistance.
In the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, post-war decolonisation was accomplished with almost unseemly haste in the face of increasingly powerful, and sometimes mutually conflicting, nationalist movements, with Britain rarely fighting to retain any territory.
The end of Britain's Empire in Africa came with exceptional rapidity, leaving the newly-independent states ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of sovereignty. Ghana's independence (1957) after a ten-year nationalist political campaign was followed by that of Nigeria and Somaliland (1960), Sierra Leone and Tanganyika (1961), Uganda (1962), Kenya and Zanzibar (1963), The Gambia (1965), Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland) and Lesotho (formerly Basutoland) in 1966 and Swaziland (1968).
British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations. Kenya had