The Gates of Africa: Death, Discovery, and the Search for Timbuktu

by Anthony Sattin

Overview

London, 1788: a group of British gentlemen---geographers, scholars, politicians, humanitarians, and traders---decide it is time to solve the mysteries of Africa's unknown interior regions. Inspired by the Enlightenment quest for knowledge, they consider it a slur on the age that the interior of Africa still remains a mystery, that maps of the "dark continent" are populated with mythical beasts, imaginary landmarks, and fabled empires. As well, they hoped that more accurate knowledge of Africa would aid in the abolition of the slave trade.

These men, a mixed group of soldiers and gentlemen, ex-convicts, and social outcasts, form the African Association, the world's first geographical society, and over several decades send hardened, grizzled adventurers to replace speculation with facts and remove the beasts from the maps. The explorers who ventured forth included Mungo Park, whose account of his travels would be a bestseller for more than a century; American John Ledyard; and Jean Louis Burckhardt, the discoverer of Petra and Abu Simbel. Their exploits would include grueling crossings of the Sahara, the exploration of the Nile, and--most dramatically--the search for the great River Niger and its legendary city of gold: Timbuktu.

Anthony Sattin weaves the plotting of the London gentlemen and the experiences of their extraordinary explorers into a gripping account of high adventure, international intrigue, and geographical discovery. The Gates of Africa is a story of human courage and fatal ambition, a groundbreaking insight into the struggle to reveal the secrets of Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466862357
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/07/2014
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Anthony Sattin is a journalist, broadcaster, and the author of several books, including Shooting the Breeze, Lifting the Veil, Florence Nightingale's Letters from Egypt, and the highly acclaimed The Pharaoh's Shadow. Over the past two decades, he has traveled extensively over the territory in which the African Association operated. An expert on the literature of travel, he has written for a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, and Condé Nast Traveller. He lives in Great Britain.

Anthony Sattin is a journalist, broadcaster, and the author of several books, including Shooting the Breeze, The Gates of Africa, Lifting the Veil, Florence Nightingale's Letters from Egypt, and the highly acclaimed The Pharaoh's Shadow. An expert on the literature of travel, he has written for a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, and Condé Nast Traveller. He lives in Great Britain.

Editorial Reviews

Between June 1788 and July 1831-a period rich in the annals of exploration and mapmaking-the African Association (formed at St. Alban's Tavern, London, under the leadership of Sir Joseph Banks) carried out a remarkable series of explorations of the African interior. The association's intrepid travelers crossed the Sahara, explored the Nile and the Niger, and ultimately entered Timbuktu. Sattin (The Pharaoh's Shadow) adroitly contrasts his lively account of these explorations with snapshots of what was going on in the rest of the world at the time, e.g., the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the abolition of slavery. Unfortunately, the first word in Sattin's subtitle resonates throughout this account. Of the dozen or so association travelers only Simon Lucas and Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds returned alive. Sattin's scholarship is impressive, as evidenced by ten pages of sources, and his narrative highly engaging.-Robert C. Jones, Warrensburg, MO Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A vigorous history, by a sympathetic and patient fellow traveler (Letters from Egypt, 1988, etc.), of the long-ago efforts by European explorers to reach a fabled African city. It's still not the easiest thing to reach Timbuktu, out on a bend of the Niger River in the Malian desert. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans wanting to find the city, whose existence was barely a rumor to them, and to open up the Sahara to their trade faced more obstacles still: a lack of reliable maps; an Ottoman Empire to the east that instructed the Muslim faithful that allowing Europeans to pass by "is betraying your Sovereign (the Ottoman Emperor), your religion, and every Mahometan"; actively hostile populations fearing the presence among them of possible slavers and spies; Bedouin and Tuareg bands only too glad to rob and kill, and more, all on top of the inclement natural conditions and lack of amenities. Undeterred, the great botanist Joseph Banks gathered fellow scientists, scholars, and explorers to found a private group called the African Association, which would sponsor expeditions and, at the same time, work to abolish the slave trade. Its founding and first-generation members numbered some astonishingly accomplished men, among them Banks himself, the navigator John Ledyard ("independent America's first explorer"), the young soldier Daniel Houghton, the gloriously named Scottish traveler Mungo Park. Later generations of African Association members were no less well credentialed, and many of them suffered enormously to accumulate bits and pieces of knowledge about the Niger River and the way to the African desert interior. Sattin's anecdote-laced tales of their likes, and of the deeds andmisadventures of dimly remembered men such as Swiss-born Jean Louis Burckhardt (who sagely remarked, "It is a less fatiguing duty to perform travels than to write them down") and Gordon Laing (the first European known to have entered Timbuktu), are wholly memorable and, overall, offer fitting tribute to the work of the African Association in all its multifaceted glory. A pleasure for students of exploration, as well as for armchair travelers. Agent: Gillon Aitken/Gillon Aitken Associates

Kirkus Reviews

"An extraordinary panorama of adventure, scholarship, and intellectual enterprise."

- Jan Morris, author of Venice and Manhattan '45

"Elegantly told, richly researched, and profoundly moving."

- Adam Nicolson, The Daily Telegraph

"Absorbing, highly readable and in places ironically humorous... A well-rounded and definitive study."

- Martin Booth, The Sunday Times

"An important, pioneering, and extremely entertaining contribution to the history of travel."

- Justin Marozzi, Literary Review

"Sattin has excelled himself."

- Condé Nast Traveller

"This is the stuff of which ripping yarns are made—-and Anthony Sattin has certainly written one here."

- Geographical Magazine

"The Gates of Africa tells a story that has never been adequately told before and does so with style and scholarship. A remarkable story told remarkably well."

- Andrew Gouldie, The Times Higher Education Supplement

From the Publisher