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Introduction

Mungo Park’s Ghost

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2023

Dane Kennedy
Affiliation:
George Washington University, Washington DC
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Summary

This introductory chapter highlights the book’s key themes. It explains why Mungo Park exerted so much influence on the British cultural imagination and inspired so many others to follow in his footsteps. It shows how Park’s legacy led to the two expeditions that are central focus of the book, one to follow up on his failed mission to trace the course of the Niger River, the other to determine whether the Niger became the Congo River, as he believed. It sets the two expeditions in the broader context of Britain’s imperial rivalry with France, the slave trade and the campaign to end it, and the independent agendas of the region’s African states. It then asks why these expeditions disappeared from the annals of British exploration, a question that requires an examination of the roles that mythic masculinity and heroic failure have played in shaping popular interest in explorers and exploration. Challenging these ideas, it calls for a more integrative history of exploration that acknowledges the involvement of a wide range of parties and frames their actions within the context of the political, social, and economic forces that transformed British interest in Africa in the early nineteenth century.

Type
Chapter
Information
Mungo Park's Ghost
The Haunted Hubris of British Explorers in Nineteenth-Century Africa
, pp. 1 - 9
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Introduction
  • Dane Kennedy, George Washington University, Washington DC
  • Book: Mungo Park's Ghost
  • Online publication: 24 December 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009392990.002
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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.

  • Introduction
  • Dane Kennedy, George Washington University, Washington DC
  • Book: Mungo Park's Ghost
  • Online publication: 24 December 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009392990.002
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.

  • Introduction
  • Dane Kennedy, George Washington University, Washington DC
  • Book: Mungo Park's Ghost
  • Online publication: 24 December 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009392990.002
Available formats
×