Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T16:24:36.886Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - RELATIONS WITH AFRICA

from CHAPTER VIII - EUROPEAN RELATIONS WITH ASIA AND AFRICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
J. D. Hargreaves
Edited by
Elliot H. Goodwin
J. D. Hargreaves
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen
Get access

Summary

By the later eighteenth century, Europeans were looking at Africa with new expectations and hopes. Malachy Postlethwayt, citing Leo Africanus, claimed that the continent and its peoples could produce not merely precious metals but ‘all the richest articles of the East and West India commerce’; ‘if once a turn for industry and the arts was introduced among them, a greater quantity of the European produce and manufactures might be exported thither than to any other country in the whole world’. Merchants and manufacturers seeking new markets, statesmen whose colonial systems had been damaged in war, dreamed similar dreams; and, in this period, some took tentative steps to discover what substance might lie behind them.

The primary need, if speculations based on Leo Africanus were to give way to credit-worthy enterprises, was for precise geographical knowledge. The aspiration to extend trade powerfully reinforced the interest which students of the developing natural sciences showed in Africa, as in other unexplored regions. Inspired by Linnaeus, many Swedish botanists made modest journeys into unfamiliar country, noting, like Sparrmann at the Cape, what economic potentialities the land seemed to hold, together with much miscellaneous sociological detail. Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society and sponsor of botanical studies at Kew, also encouraged botanical collectors in Africa; among his correspondents was James Bruce, whose observations during his journeys in Abyssinia (1768–73) were inspired by a widely ranging scientific curiosity.

Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge Modern History , pp. 236 - 251
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, C. D., ‘Activities of Danish Botanists in Guinea, 1783–1850,’ Transactions, Historical Society of Ghana, vol. III (1957)Google Scholar
Adams, J., Sketches taken during Ten Voyages to Africa… (London, n.d. [1821]).Google Scholar
Bartels, F. L., ‘Philip Quaque, 1741–1816’, Transactions, G[old] C[oast] and T[ogoland] H[istorical] S[ociety], vol. I (1955).Google Scholar
Beaver, P., African Memoranda… (London, 1805).Google Scholar
Charles-Roux, F. Cf., France et Afrique du Nord avant 1830 (Paris, 1932).Google Scholar
Charles-Roux, F., L'Angleterre, L'Isthme de Suez et l'Égypte au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1922)Google Scholar
Charles-Roux, F., Les Origines de l'Expédition d'Égypte (Paris, 1910).Google Scholar
Clarkson, T., The History…of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (London, 2 vols., 1808).Google Scholar
Coupland, R., East Africa and Its Invaders (2nd ed., Oxford, 1956).Google Scholar
Coupland, R., Wilberforce (1923)Google Scholar
Cultru, P., Histoire du Sénégal (Paris, 1910).Google Scholar
Debrunner, H., ‘Notable Danish Chaplains on the Gold Coast,’ Transactions, G.C. and T.H.S., vol. III (1956)Google Scholar
Demanet, , Nouvelle Histoire de l'Afrique Françoise (Paris, 1767).Google Scholar
Deschamps, H., Histoire de Madagascar (Paris, 1961).Google Scholar
Donnan, E., Documents Illustrative of the Slave Trade to America (Washington, 1931), vol. II.Google Scholar
Duffy, J., Portuguese Africa (Cambridge, Mass., 1959)Google Scholar
Evans, L. E. C., ‘An Early Constitution of Sierra Leone’, Sierra Leone Studies, vol. XVIII (1932).Google Scholar
Falconbridge, A. M., Two Voyages to Sierra Leone (2nd ed., London, 1802).Google Scholar
Falconbridge, , Substance of the Report… by… the Sierra Leone Company (London, 1794).Google Scholar
Forde, D. (ed.), Efik Traders of Old Calabar (London, 1957).Google Scholar
Fyfe, C. H., A History of Sierra Leone (London, 1962), ch. 11.Google Scholar
Gaston-Martin, G., Histoire de l'Esclavage dans les Colonies françaises (Paris, 1948)Google Scholar
Golbeny, S.M.X., Travels in Africa… (trans. Blagdon, F.; London, 1802)Google Scholar
Harlow, V. T., The Founding of the Second British Empire, vol. I (London, 1952).Google Scholar
Hoskins, H. L., British Routes to India (New York and London, 1928).Google Scholar
Hyslop, B. F., French Nationalism in 1789 according to the General Cahiers (New York, 1934).Google Scholar
Kuczynski, R. R., Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire, vol. I (London, 1948), ch. 2, 11.Google Scholar
Lindroth, Sten, ‘Adam Afzelius’, Sierra Leone Studies, n.s. 4 (1955).Google Scholar
MacCrone, I. D., Race Attitudes in South Africa (Johannesburg, 1937), chs. VI and VII.Google Scholar
Macpherson, D., Annals of Commerce (London, 1805).Google Scholar
Marais, J. S., Maynier and the First Boer Republic (Cape Town, 1944).Google Scholar
Martin, E. C., The British West African Settlements 1750–1821 (London, 1927), chs. v-vii.Google Scholar
Masson, P., Histoire des Établissements et du Commerce François dans l'Afrique Barbaresque, 1560–1793 (Paris, 1903).Google Scholar
Mellor, G. R., British Imperial Trusteeship, 1783–1850 (London, 1951), ch. IGoogle Scholar
Norris, Robert, Accounts and Papers, 1789 (xxvi).Google Scholar
Postlethwayt, M., The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (London, 2nd ed. 1757).Google Scholar
Quesne, J. S. ed. Mémoires du Capitaine Landolphe, (Paris, 1823).Google Scholar
Rambert, G. (ed.), Histoire du Commerce de Marseille, tome v, Le Levant de 1660 à 1789, by Robert, Paris (Paris, 1957).Google Scholar
Rinchon, D., Les Armements Négriers au XVIIIe Siède (Brussels, 1956).Google Scholar
Saugnier, , Relation de plusieurs Voyages à la Côte d'Afrique (Paris, 1791)Google Scholar
Schefer, C., Instructions Générates… (Paris, 1927).Google Scholar
Wadstrom, C. B., An Essay on Colonization… (London, 1794).Google Scholar
Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×