From the15th century, some countries in western Europe began to expand outward, with Africa bearing the brunt. These countries compete to open sea lanes, plunder African resources and trade slaves. At first, these activities were limited to coastal areas. With the completion of industrial development, the demand of European countries for overseas markets and raw materials is more urgent, and various geographical investigations and expeditions are in the ascendant, and gradually penetrate into the hinterland of Africa. These activities are mainly concentrated in the densely populated and fertile Nile, Niger, Zambezi and Congo river basins. Europeans engaged in these activities are Portuguese, French, Dutch, Germans, and the largest number is British. Among these British people, three are the most striking: Livingston, Stanley and speke.

David Livingston (18 13- 1873) was born in a hardworking and poor worker's family in Scotland, and has been working in a cotton mill since he was ten years old. The tempering of hard life has made him a tireless person since he was a child. 1834, Presbyterian Church recruited medical missionaries to go to China. This is very inspiring for Livingston. Since then, he has spent four hours studying Latin, medicine and theology besides working ten hours a day to prepare for his dream. Soon, the Sino-British Opium War broke out, and his dream of going to China was dashed. 184/kloc-0 was sent to south Africa in March, with the task of spreading the gospel of Christ, conducting geographical investigation and opening up commercial channels.

After Livingston came to South Africa, he first became familiar with the people's feelings. He often goes deep into the backcountry on foot or drives an ox cart to learn about the local language, folk customs and culture. Once, he was attacked by a lion when he went out, and his left arm was injured and he was disabled for life. But this did not shake his determination to work in Africa. 1845 In June, he married Mary, the daughter of Robert Moffat, a Scottish missionary who was also engaged in missionary activities in South Africa. Mary supported his work and stayed with him for a long time.

After completing the missionary task initially, Livingston decided to go deep into the hinterland of Africa and find a passage to the Atlantic coast. 1853, 165438+ 10. In October, he and several indigenous followers set off from the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia and set off northwest along the Zambezi River in a canoe. When he couldn't sail, he abandoned the ship and walked through the dense virgin forest in the rain. On May 3 1 the following year, he arrived at his destination-Luanda, the current capital of Angola on the west coast of Africa. After a short rest, he returned to explore the whole Zambezi River basin. After nearly two years' trekking, he arrived at the mouth of Zambezi River into the Indian Ocean on May 20th 1856, which is now quelimane. This is the first time that Europeans have crossed the African continent from west to east.

One thing Livingston will never forget in this operation. Yes 1855, 165438+ 10 month, 17. He was taken to Malamba, Zambia today by local people. Suddenly, he heard the thunder roar and was shocked. He lifted his eyes to the southeast and found the Zambezi River densely covered with smoke. There was a waterfall hanging upside down in the air. Locals call it "Mosio Tunia", which means "the fog of thunder and lightning". It proved to be the largest and most spectacular waterfall in the world. Livingston was overjoyed and immediately named after the Queen of England, known as "Victoria Falls".

The discovery of this waterfall is regarded as Livingston's greatest achievement in Africa's geographical exploration. Therefore, the British once named Malamba after him. 1856 65438+In February, he returned to London and was welcomed as a "national hero". The following year, his book "A Journey of Missionary and Investigation in South Africa" was published, and the first edition issued 70,000 copies, which brought him great honor and huge income.

1March 858 Livingston came to Africa again. His identity on this trip is "British consul in charge of East Africa coast and inland, commander of East Africa and Central Africa expedition". The expedition consisted of six Europeans and ten Africans. After completing the investigation of the Zambezi River basin, they continued northward and found Lake Niassa, the third largest lake in Africa. 1862 In April, his wife died of malaria, and his eldest son Robert, who was also going on an expedition, was killed in the American Civil War. The next year, Livingston returned to England with the pain of losing his wife and children. During his five-year trip to Africa, he accumulated a lot of scientific materials and wrote and published Adventures of Zambezi River and its tributaries. This laid the foundation for Britain to establish a "protectorate of Central Africa" and a colony of Nyasaland.

From 65438 to 866 10, Livingston came to Africa for the third time. His main task was to explore the source of the Nile. At that time, there was a heated debate on this issue in Britain. The two views, represented by explorers john hanning speke and richard burton, are tit for tat. The former thinks that the source of the river is Lake Victoria, while the latter thinks that it is Lake Tanganyika. Livingston believes that these two statements are wrong, and the real source of the river may be an unknown big lake on both sides of Hunan. In order to prove his point, he set off from Zanzibar Island and went straight to the Great Lakes region in the west for the last adventure in his life.

However, shortly after the departure, the expedition was not harmonious and the entourage abandoned him. But this did not shake his determination. With the spirit of never returning to his death, he went on regardless of losing contact with the outside world. Accompanied by loyal local servants Juba and Susie, he set off from the southern end of Nyasa Lake to the northwest at the beginning of 1867, and successively discovered Bangweiulu and Mweilu Lake. 1869 In March, with the help of Arab businessmen, he arrived at the small town of Ujiji on the lake Tanganyika. Two years later, he arrived in Nyangowe (near today's Kisangani), where the Lualaba River joins the Congo River. This is the hinterland of Africa that Europeans have not yet reached.

Running in the tropical jungle with gnats for a long time, he suffered from malaria for 27 times and was quite weak. 187 1 year1October, he returned to Yuzhi Temple and found himself suffering from severe pneumonia, and he often had hallucinations. Just then, American Henry Morton Stanley came to the rescue. Livingston accepted his material help, but rejected the suggestion of "leaving Africa". When his health improved slightly, he asked Juba and Susie to carry him on his back and continue to explore the source of the Nile. In May 1873, 1, he was exhausted and died suddenly in Chitambo village, Barochelan district, Zambia. The water system he tried to explore in the last stage of his life was actually not the Nile system at all, but the Congo system. It is said that he was vaguely aware of this before he died, but he didn't have enough courage to admit his misjudgment. This is the tragedy of the seeker who pursues truth all his life.

After Livingston's death, the entourage disembowelled, took out the internal organs and buried them in African land. After a long journey of nine months, several loyal servants carried his body to Zanzibar Island and then shipped it back to England. On April 1874, 18, Britain held a grand funeral for him, and buried his body in the middle of the hall of Westminster Abbey in London, where only princes and nobles could occupy a place. In the same year, Livingston's The Last Adventure was published, ending his 32-year adventure in Africa. Stanley later commented on Livingston: "In the whole history of African exploration, there is no name as loud as Livingston. In him, it embodies the excellent qualities of all other explorers. "

Stanley was originally named John rowlands and was born in Wales, England. He is an illegitimate child, adopted by relatives since childhood, and grew up in an art school for the poor. At the age of eighteen, he couldn't stand the vision of society, so he boarded a merchant ship and went to America alone. When the ship arrived in New Orleans, Henry Stanley, a kind businessman, took him in and asked him to use his surname. Soon, the businessman died of illness, and Stanley embarked on a wandering life. He was a soldier in the American Civil War, a sailor on a merchant ship and a reporter for the New York Herald.

/kloc-one day in 0/870, he was ordered by the newspaper and immediately went to Africa to "carry out an unusual mission". It turned out that the British explorer Livingston, who was exploring in Central Africa, broke contact with London, and the news of "missing" spread like wildfire. The owner of The New York Herald believes that finding and reporting the trace of Livingston will definitely bring great reputation and benefits to his newspaper. So, he decided to send Stanley, who has experience in reporting, to carry out this "special mission". Stanley was already a minor celebrity at this time, and he just wanted Vinda to die at an early date. He accepted the mission with pleasure.

Stanley arrived in Zanzibar on 187 1+0. After a period of preparation, he led a well-equipped expedition to Lake Tanganyika, where Livingston sent his last letter to London. Stanley is very strict with expedition members, whether they are white or black servants. Whip anyone who dares to escape, and hang anyone who dares to resist. He wrote a report as he walked. After the report was sent back to new york, it was published on the front page of the newspaper, which aroused strong repercussions among readers. 165438+ 10/0/0, the expedition arrived in the small town of ujiji on the lake Tanganyika, and found Livingston, who was seriously ill, and gave him emergency rescue. Stanley admired Livingston's dedication and made up his mind that he would take risks in the future.

At the beginning of 1872, Stanley returned to Britain after completing the scheduled task. He gave lectures everywhere, and the scenery was temporary. The New York Herald praised him as "the greatest African explorer". Mark Twain, a famous American writer, even compared him with Columbus, an explorer who "discovered the New World". This summer, Stanley published the book How I Find Livingston, which caused a sensation in Britain and America.

After Livingston's death, Stanley led an expedition composed of more than 400 Africans to the hinterland of Africa in June 1874+0 1. Along the way, the hard life made many people die and flee. By February of the following year, there were only 160 people left in the expedition. Nevertheless, Stanley led the expedition to continue exploring the Lualaba River. At the bend of the river from south to west, he found a waterfall commensurate with Boyoma and a small town commensurate with Niangui. These two places are Stanley Falls and Stanley Ville (Stanley City), which were later named after him. Follow this river to the Congo River, the main part of this river. The Congo River flows through the equatorial region, which is rainy all the year round and has a large amount of water. Sailing to the lower reaches of the river, between Kinshasa, the capital of Congo (DRC), and Brazzaville, the capital of Congo (Brazzaville), he found a big lake with a waterfall group under it. He named the lake and waterfall after himself and Livingston respectively. 1August, 877 12, Stanley and his expedition team arrived at the mouth of the Congo River on the Atlantic coast, thus completing a 999-day expedition. Soon, he published Crossing the Dark Continent, denying Livingston's speculation that the Lualaba River may be the upstream source of the Nile, and confirming that this river is the upstream source of the Congo River. He also found out the topography of the Congo River basin for the first time, which made European countries begin to turn their attention from exploration activities to colonial activities.

Stanley's activities in Africa attracted the attention of Belgian King Leopold II. The monarch has long been dissatisfied with his activities in Europe, a narrow world with only 30 thousand square kilometers. He is keen on overseas development, coveting the vast Congo River basin in Central Africa, and wants to turn that piece of land with an area of 70 to 80 Belgium into his own private territory. To this end, he urgently needs a "trustworthy" agent. So he took a fancy to Stanley.

Entrusted by the king, Stanley returned to the Congo River Basin in August 1879. He used the threat of force and money to coerce some local tribal leaders to accept more than 400 slavery treaties. He built the expressway in the lower reaches of the river and started shipping in the middle and upper reaches which were difficult to navigate. From 1880 to 1 1, he established a colony on the south bank of Lake Stanley and named it Leopoldville after his patron Leopold II. This is now Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. By June 1884, Stanley had been in the Congo River basin for nearly five years, and his main activity was no longer geographical exploration, but colonial development, establishing a private fief "Congo Free State" for Leopold II. In order to achieve this goal, he "worked hard all the year round" and was called "Bula Matari" (that is, "Stone Crusher") by his subordinates. All his activities are recorded in the book "Congo and the Establishment of its Free Country" published by 1885. Stanley's activities in the Congo River basin show that the single-handed geographical exploration led by individual explorers is being replaced by a large-scale military expedition with distinct political plots. This indicates that the climax of European powers' colonization of Africa is coming soon.

Stanley's last expedition to Africa, like the first, was also due to the completion of a rescue mission. It turned out that the Sudanese could not bear the slavery of the British colonists, and held an armed uprising under the leadership of Mahdi in August of 188 1. The rapid development of the rebel army cut off the contact between Amin Pasa, the governor of Equator Province in Egypt, a British protectorate, near Lake Albert. At this time, the British government remembered Stanley and sent him to find and rescue Pasa.

Stanley's rescue began in his familiar Congo River basin. 1In March, 887, he led an expedition of 708 people to set out from the mouth of the Congo River, first upstream, and then on foot. In the dark tropical rain forest, they are attacked by various wild animals from time to time, shot by poisonous arrows of indigenous people, and harassed by various diseases. They often suffer from hunger and sometimes have to eat human flesh to survive. Stanley was so cruel to the native porters that anyone who didn't listen was shot at once. At the beginning of the following year, he arrived at Lake Albert on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and found the governor and his subordinates. At this time, there were less than 200 people left in his expedition.

Stanley stayed in Lake Albert for more than a year, made clear the situation of the lake and its waters, confirmed that the nearby Mount Ruwenzori was the Moon Mountain called by Ptolemy, a great geographer in ancient Greece, and named a mountain there as Stanley Peak. At the same time, he also signed a series of treaties with local chiefs to accept British protection, which laid the foundation for Britain to establish a "protected area" and colonial rule in East Africa. All this is recorded in his book "The Darkest Africa" published by 1890.

After Stanley returned to England, he was naturalized as a British citizen on 1892 because of his "fearless and courageous actions", and then he served as a member of the British Parliament and was knighted. 1May, 904, died in London.

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John hanning speke (1827- 1864), another British explorer, was the first European to discover the source of the Nile.

Speke was born in a gentry family and received a formal education. From the age of 17, he served in the British army in India for 10 years. He received strict military training, loved hunting and traveling, and always pursued adventure and honor tirelessly. 1856 65438+February, he was ordered to go to the hinterland of Africa to explore the source of the Nile with the expedition led by Chad Burton, a famous British explorer, diplomat and scholar (182 1- 1890).

The Nile is the largest river in Africa. However, it has been a mystery for thousands of years where the source of this big river from south to north is. The Nile has two main tributaries, namely the Blue Nile and the White Nile. At the beginning of the 0/7th century, Pedro Pais, a Spanish missionary, came to Ethiopia today. As the first European to discover the source of the Blue Nile, it is Lake Tana in the western part of the Ethiopian Plateau. However, the source of the White Nile, which is longer than the Blue Nile, has never been clear. In the19th century, with the upsurge of geographical exploration in Africa, finding the source of the Nile has once again become a hot topic. At first, people always swam down from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet. However, the natural conditions in southern Sudan are very bad and it is impossible to move forward. So Burton and speke decided to change their route and go straight to the hinterland of central and eastern Africa where Heyuan might be located.

1857 In August, they landed from the coast of Tanzania and headed west with 130 followers, 30 donkeys and a lot of daily necessities. They crossed swamps, jungles and mountains and arrived in Tapola in June 5438 +065438+10. At this time, Burton and speke fell ill. Their followers took the opportunity to flee in groups, and many exploration instruments disappeared. The contradiction between the two of them intensified. Speke thinks Burton is arrogant. What makes him a puritan unbearable is that Burton always drinks too much and has fun with the black women he meets along the way. Burton, who is seven years older than him and knows more than 30 languages and dialects, despises speke as an "ignorant person who doesn't know other languages, folk customs and astronomical phenomena". But considering that they have the same mission, both of them try their best to suppress their anger. On February 1858 and 13, they discovered Lake Tanganyika, which is now called the second largest lake in Africa.

Speke, who was bent on making achievements, camped on the east bank of the lake, while Burton was still recovering, he went to explore the north alone. On August 3, he came to a lake bigger than Lake Tanganyika. Standing on the south bank of the Great Lake, looking at the boundless lake, he was extremely excited and excited. He asked the local people the name of the Great Lake, and everyone shook their heads. He named it Lake Victoria after the Queen of England. This is the first time that Europeans have come to the shore of the second largest freshwater lake in the world after Lake Superior. Speke decided that this great lake, which the local people called "extending to the end of the world", seemed to be the source of the White Nile.

Speke hurried back to the camp and reported his findings to Burton. Burton felt quite uncomfortable after hearing this, because he knew what speke's discovery meant to his future honor. He said to speke, "I don't know if your conclusion is correct. But at least you don't have enough evidence to support your conclusion. "

Burton's condition deteriorated and he decided to take the expedition home. When passing through Aden, the southern tip of Arabian Peninsula, Burton stopped for a while, and speke returned to England first. When they parted, Burton made speke promise that when he came back, they would report the new discovery about the source of the Nile to the Royal Geographic Society. However, speke didn't keep his promise. As soon as he returned to London, he made a report alone and was praised. Burton was furious and hated speke.

186 1 year, with the support of the Royal Geographical Society, speke left Burton and returned to Africa alone to further explore the source of the Nile. He first came to Karagu Kingdom, which is located west of Lake Victoria in Uganda today, and drew a map of parts of the Great Lakes. After that, he went north to the kingdom of Buganda, which is located in today's central Uganda. King Mutsa treated him warmly and even gave him several indigenous women. One of them, named Merry, later gave birth to a child for him.

1On July 7th, 862, speke continued northward with the food given by the guide, the ox horn and Mutesa. On July 28th, he came to the northernmost part of Lake Victoria. Standing in the southern suburbs of Jinjia, Uganda's second largest city, he saw the lake spewing out from here, falling off the cliff, forming a waterfall, and then slowly flowing to the northwest. He was ecstatic and decided that the White Nile flowed to the northwest. He named the waterfall at the mouth of Lake Riben after a generous patron of the expedition. In order to further verify that this is the upstream source of the Nile, he continued to go down the river. In February of the following year, he arrived in Gondock, southern Sudan, and met Samuel Baker, another British explorer who was exploring the source of the Nile, which further confirmed his conclusion. Baker later wrote: To celebrate speke's great geographical discovery, we shot a donkey together and ate a hearty roast donkey meat in the evening.

Speke immediately sent a telegram to London, declaring that "the problem of the source of the Nile has been completely solved". The news caused two completely different reactions in Britain. Some people expressed joy and support, while others expressed doubt and opposition. The fiercest opposition is Burton. Burton has been engaged in exploration activities in India, the Middle East and Africa for a long time, and he is also familiar with the affairs of West Asia and Africa. He pretends to be an unquestionable authority on geographical discovery. In his view, speke only walked a short distance along the river flowing from Lake Victoria, and there was not enough scientific evidence to prove that this river was the Nile flowing thousands of kilometers north and finally flowing into the Mediterranean Sea. He insisted that Lake Tanganyika might be the source of the Nile.

Geographical investigation has deepened people's understanding of Africa, a mysterious continent, and uncovered many mysteries about Africa for thousands of years. This is a great progress in human understanding of the world and the history of the world. At the same time, we should also see that most of these geographical investigation activities are sponsored or sponsored by developed capitalist countries in western Europe, with obvious political, economic and cultural utilitarian considerations. In the final analysis, these inspection activities have always served the European powers to directly or indirectly occupy and carve up Africa, rather than "completely to relieve the suffering of hunger, ignorance and disease suffered by Africans" as advocated by some western scholars. British historians Roland Oliver and John Fitch clearly expounded this point in their co-authored A Brief History of Africa. In their view, the eyes of European governments are fixed on Africa, trying to "expand their narrow space of activities to that vast continent."