Publications by explorers of Africa were among the great bestsellers of the nineteenth century. The likes of Mungo Park, David Livingstone, and H. M. Stanley became household names, and were often the subjects of multiple biographies. By contrast, in Britain at least, Australian explorers had a lower profile. Australia was certainly further away, but it also failed to arouse the historic and romantic resonances of Africa, the continent that sat astride the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Middle Eastern, and Indian Ocean worlds, a continent replete with a great variety of tlsbenvironments and diverse and apparently colourful peoples, a continent associated with a repudiated slave trade, and above all a continent brimming with the most striking wild animals. Exploration of such themes remained central to popular works until a generation or so ago, usually replicating the triumphalist narrative which opened up the supposedly dark places of the world to modernity. In this vein, explorers continued to be celebrated as heroic, tragic, or inspirational figures.
More recently, however, explorers and their activities have been subjected to more sceptical analyses. Historical geographers led the way here, and the bicentennial of Livingstone’s birth in 2013 produced a crop of new work by a number of scholars. Of these, there can be little doubt that Dane Kennedy’s The last blank spaces is the most extensive and subtle, not only appraising the better-known African exploration in strikingly fresh ways but also suggesting important points of comparison with the exploration of Australia (which aroused excitement among Australian settler communities almost equal to that stimulated in Britain by Africa). Among the many merits of Kennedy’s work is that he situates continental exploration in genuinely global contexts, linking it to maritime explorations down to the eighteenth century, as well as to other forms of exploratory activity that followed in the twentieth.
Kennedy is well aware of the major differences between the exploration of the two continents of Africa and Australia: for example, in the modes of subsistence of the peoples among whom the explorers travelled (with Africa providing better sources of food); in the extent to which animals could conveniently be used for transport (more so in Australia, notwithstanding problems over fodder) or meat (Africa was more promising); and in the rivalries stimulating exploration (international in Africa, colonial in Australia). But his book is most telling in discussing the similarities between the two. First, explorers continued to be obsessed by the notion of waterborne travel. Given the navigability of the Nile, it was assumed that the other great rivers of Africa would lead into the interior, a myth which Livingstone fostered and then, despite himself, disproved. The Niger and the Congo could be navigated only once major logistical problems had been solved. Similarly, the explorers of Australia’s coasts searched for rivers that would give access to the unknown centre. Once that had been shown illusory, the concept of an inland sea maintained its hold for a time. Explorers also continued to be obsessed with boats – or the power of steam – as offering the most convenient modes of transport. This led to an emphasis on large-scale exploratory expeditions when better results were often obtained by much smaller, lighter parties (as in Livingstone’s first journey). Furthermore, it may be said that the bigger the group, the more violence was likely to follow in its wake, with Stanley furnishing the classic example. Indeed, the passage of explorers was often a dislocating and violent one as far as indigenous people were concerned.
If Africans were more densely settled in stronger and frequently sophisticated political units, Australia’s Aborigines were no less familiar than Africans with their own environments. It is thus no surprise that explorers were usually dependent upon the knowledge of indigenous communities, in effect taking their members into partnership as their guides and other auxiliaries. Without these partners, explorers could not have achieved their objectives, even though their contributions were invariably obscured in the published works (diaries, letters, and journals, it should be noted, are often more frank).
Other similarities included the societies and public bodies which sponsored, appointed, and equipped the explorations of Africa and Australia, in search of new resources or seeking the expansion of empire, often in the (dis)guise of the pursuit of scientific knowledge. For their part, the explorers took on climatic and medical dangers in their quest for celebrity status and profit, eager to get their achievements into print, often competing with each other to do so. Another similarity was that these explorations were in aid of scrambles for territory: in Africa, the notorious Scramble of the final decades of the nineteenth century; in Australia, the scramble for more extensive areas – and therefore resources – on the part of the colonies of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland.
Kennedy adopts a thematic approach in this book. His chapters survey the scientific pretensions of exploration, the professionalization of explorers, the ‘gateways’ that they used to enter their continents (Islamic in Africa, via the ruler of Tripoli, the khedives of Egypt, and the sultans of Zanzibar), and the major logistical problems faced by the expeditions. In the final three chapters, he turns his attention to indigenous intermediaries, the encounters between travelling Europeans and other peoples, and the celebrity status attained by some explorers, frequently on the backs of others. Throughout, he seeks to demonstrate that failure is often more illuminating than success and that accounts of exploration are as significant for their silences as for their descriptions of terrain traversed, people encountered, and alleged geographical conquests. These silences were sometimes introduced by editors and publishers, but usually the explorers were themselves silent about anything that would detract from their status or would require them to share their achievements with others. As Kennedy puts it, there was often a disjuncture between public pronouncements and private thoughts and actions, the former obscuring the significance of cultural brokers and transcultural experiences (including sexual and other relationships) with indigenous people. En route, various historiographical issues are examined, such as the concept of masculinity, the interleaving of race and class, the significance of the development of bourgeois public spheres (in Britain and in colonial cities), and the Robinson and Gallagher Egyptocentric account of the Scramble for Africa (which Kennedy considers can be turned on its head if a peripheral focus is used).
Reviewers love to find weaknesses, but the only one I can come up with is that the treatment of the South–Central African axis of this explorative activity – which embraced missionaries, hunters, rival African states (as well as conflicts among whites), and the search for mineral resources based on historic precedents – is rather inadequate. Other ‘gateways’ could have been found here, notably the one supplied by King Khama of the Tswana, whose help in sending parties into the interior was invaluable and, importantly, was in pursuit of his own objectives. However, this in no way detracts from the fact that The last blank spaces is a remarkable book, comprehensively researched, and with a level of analytic sophistication never before seen in the examination of exploration.
