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.

Mungo Park’s second expedition in 1805-1806 was a deadly failure, yet it did nothing to diminish his posthumous reputation as a national hero. What prompted this expedition, why it failed, and how it inspired new expeditions in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars are the subjects of this chapter. It frames Park’s expedition in the context of the transatlantic slave trade, showing how that trade shaped British imperial rivalry with France and Park’s efforts to solve the riddle of the Niger River’s route and outlet. Logistical problems, political tensions, and endemic diseases weakened the expeditionary force, and violent clashes with Africans along the Niger led to the deaths of Park and his remaining companions at Bussa. An investigation by the African trader Isaaco confirmed Park’s fate. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the British developed an ambitious new plan to vindicate Park’s sacrifice by sending expeditions to the Niger and the Congo.