Mungo Park’s first expedition to the Niger
Commissioned by the African Association of London, the Scottish physician Mungo Park traveled from a British trading post on the Gambia River into the interior of West Africa and became the first European to see the Niger, at Ségou, establishing that the river flows east.
- Date
- 2 December 1795 – 10 June 1797exact date · duration: ≈ 2 years
- Place
- Ségou on the Nigertoday: Ségou, Mali · Africa
- Participants
- Mungo Park
- Threads
- The world in the Age of Revolution
- Also known as
- Путешествие Мунго Парка
Park left the trading post of Pisania on the Gambia on 2 December 1795. In Ludamar a Moorish chief held him captive for four months; after escaping on 1 July 1796, he reached the Niger later that month at Ségou, the capital of the Bambara kingdom, and followed the river downstream as far as Silla, but, ill and without means, he was forced to turn back.
The return journey along the Niger by way of Bamako took almost a year: Park spent seven months at Kamalia and got back to Pisania only on 10 June 1797, together with a slave caravan led by the trader Karfa. His book Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (1799) became a bestseller and opened the era of European exploration of the African interior. The exact route is known only approximately, so only Ségou is marked on the map.
Connections
Related events
- Slave Trade Act 180725 March 1807 · Western and Central EuropePark described the internal African slave trade in detail and sailed home on a slave ship; his book came out at the height of the British debate on abolishing the slave trade
Adjacent events in the thread
- Edward Jenner’s cowpox vaccination14 May 1796 · Western and Central Europe
- Haitian Revolutionbetween 21 August and 22 August 1791 – 1 January 1804 · Latin America
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within a year of this event
Western and Central Europe
- Edward Jenner’s cowpox vaccination14 May 1796
- Italian campaign of 1796–179710 April 1796 – 17 October 1797
Eastern Europe
- Death of Catherine the Great6 (17) November 1796
- Third Partition of Poland13 (24) October 1795
Middle East and Egypt
- French invasion of Egypt and Syria19 May 1798 – 2 September 1801
Central and Northern Asia
- Syrym Datuly’s uprising1783–1797
East Asia
- Abdication of the Qianlong Emperor9 February 1796
- White Lotus Rebellionbetween 1794 and 1796 – 1804
Latin America
- Haitian Revolutionbetween 21 August and 22 August 1791 – 1 January 1804
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Mungo Park (explorer)
- Wikipedia (Russian): Парк, Мунго
- Park M. Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa. — London, 1799.