"Explorers of the Nile" provides a detailed description (an overly detailed description in my mind) of the explorers of the Nile and east Africa. Clearly well researched, but the details of names and places only other historians might recognize, and which the reader will most likely never come across again, made my eyes cross and my mind wander.

There's a lot to learn from the book about the explorers of the area, the geography, the history, and I enjoyed the analysis toward the end of the book discussing the after affects of the explorations and the colonization on the current events in those Countries.

But I think that a more readable book on the subject, although more limited in content, was Martin Dugard's "Into Africa: The Epic Adventure of Stanley and Livingston". ( )

Biography tends to be regarded somewhat askance among academic historians, particularly those working within universities and institutions of higher learning. And that is a pity, because so much of history as a popular source of knowledge of nations, countries, and world events comes to us through that filter. And then there are works such as Tim Jeal's, which lift the genre to an even higher estimation.

Jeal's work on the Nile explorers of the nineteenth century is that important. It revises the assessment mostly handed down for the past 150 years or so of John Hanning Speke as an opportunist who stole the glory appropriately belonging to Richard F. Burton. Jeal shreds that argument apart through his investigations of Burton's and Speke's own works and the heretofore unknown documentation now available from recently discovered archival material, manuscripts, and writings. What emerges is a portrait of Speke as an irascible individual who promoted himself rather poorly. Yet he is seen as someone who is also forthright, dogged, and possessed of a strong moral sense. The same cannot be said for Burton, who Jeal successfully proves spent a lifetime building a publicity campaign attacking Speke while generating undeserved praise for himself.

That is at the core of the book. There are also chapters on Stanley and Livingstone and Samuel Baker. Jeal makes the case that each man, even Burton, was sincere in their opposition to slavery. And their proposals for free trade and commerce were built upon a true humanitarian desire to see central Africa develop the means and strength to protect itself from slavers. Jeal doesn't hold back on these people's shortcomings, but he gives them their dues as men interested in projecting their faith and sincerely seeking out knowledge for the betterment of mankind.

In achieving this goal, Jeal also neatly delineates between this era of exploration and adventure and the one that immediately came after, the so-called "Scramble for Africa" and inroads made into Africa by European imperialism. They are separate ideas, according to Jeal, with the exploitive commercial nature and power politics of the latter era desperately different in motivation than the decades in which Livingstone, Stanley, Baker, Speke, and Burton actually hoped to intervene to stop an evil practice, slavery. For those interested, an even greater revisionist effort is put forth in Jeal's subsequent independent biography of Stanley.

If there is one weakness in this book, it comes with the last two chapters. For some reason, Jeal goes off on a tangent and writes about "what if." He spends too much time fantasizing about what could have happened had British policy in particular been different in Darfur and in Uganda, the area designated as Equatoria. If only a separate Equatoria had been carved out, muses Jeal, then perhaps there would have been no Sudanese civil war and perhaps no Idi Amin in Uganda. Too much irrelevant speculation, here, because it didn't happen. Still, a landmark history of Africa and Britain's role, there. And written with fairness. ( )

Good eye opening account of the tribulations of African exploration definitely not a walk in the park. ( )

The Nile River might have been one of the cradles of early civilization, but the source of that great river remained a mystery until the Victorian Era. As scientific exploration all around the planet became in vogue, much of it sponsored in England. The source of the Nile, as well as the exploration of central Africa, received considerable attention at this time.

Among those who sought to confirm their theories was Richard Burton, John Speke, David Livingstone, Henry Stanley, and Samuel Baker. Raising money to fund an expedition was the least of their worries...once one the move, expeditions would run afoul of local wars, slave traders, cannibals, and endless biological agents - infections, diseases, and other critters. In many cases, a large number of the original party would succumb, and sometimes even their famous leaders.

The difficulties of the challenge cannot be overestimated. A year or more could be spent pursuing a dead end, a lake with other tributaries, or a morass of shifting channels. The region was rife with tribal warfare, and Caucasian explorers were only sometimes tolerated. Local diplomacy was a necessary skill that all explorers had to work on, although some, like Burton, couldn't ever overcome his prejudices to be successful.

A good map would be a welcome accompiament to this book. Google Maps was often insufficient in locating every place covered in this book. I was a little surprised though about how far west into central Africa the quest took some explorers: indeed, it was often an elaborate detour to figure out if a particular river was a tributary to the Nile or the Congo.

At the end of the book, Jeal takes us from Stanley's second expedition (his first was to locate Dr. Livingstone) up to modern times. Some of the tribal discord discovered then holds true today. It was a nice touch to see the continuity from this period of time to the present, and helps to understand some of what goes on in the world's backwater. ( )

I found this very interesting - see my review http://www.dnsmedia.co.uk/reviews/view/1099 ( )