European exploration of Africa

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European exploration of Africa

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A chronicle of European maritime efforts to map and exploit the African continent.

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Origins & Early Life

The geography of North Africa has been reasonably well known among Europeans since classical antiquity in Greco-Roman geography. Northwest Africa (the Maghreb) was known as either Libya or Africa, while Egypt was considered part of Asia. European exploration of sub-Saharan Africa begins with the Age of Discovery in the 15th century, pioneered by the Kingdom of Portugal under Henry the Navigator. The Cape of Good Hope was first reached by Bartolomeu Dias on 12 March 1488, opening the important sea route to India and the Far East, but European exploration of Africa itself remained very limited during the 16th and 17th centuries. The European powers were content to establish trading posts along the coast while they were actively exploring and colonizing the New World.

Career & Major Achievements

Exploration of the interior of Africa was thus mostly left to the Muslim slave traders, who in tandem with the Muslim conquest of Sudan established far-reaching networks and supported the economy of a number of Sahelian kingdoms during the 15th to 18th centuries. At the beginning of the 19th century, European knowledge of the geography of the interior of sub-Saharan Africa was still rather limited. Expeditions exploring Southern Africa were made during the 1830s and 1840s, so that around the midpoint of the 19th century and the beginning of the colonial Scramble for Africa, the unexplored parts were now limited to what would turn out to be the Congo Basin and the African Great Lakes. This "Heart of Africa" remained one of the last remaining "blank spots" on world maps of the later 19th century (alongside the Arctic, Antarctic, and interior of the Amazon Basin). It was left for 19th-century European explorers, including those searching for the famed sources of the Nile, notably John Hanning Speke, Richard Francis Burton, David Livingstone, and Henry Morton Stanley, to complete the exploration of Africa by the 1870s.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

After this, the general geography of Africa was known, but it was left to further expeditions during the 1880s onward, notably, those led by Oskar Lenz, to flesh out more detail such as the continent's geological makeup. The Phoenicians explored North Africa, establishing a number of colonies, the most prominent of which was Carthage. Carthage itself conducted exploration of West Africa. The first alleged circumnavigation of the African continent attested to was made by Phoenician sailors, in an expedition commissioned by Egyptian pharaoh Necho II, c. 600 BC which took three years. A report of this expedition is provided by Herodotus (4.37).

Chronological Milestones & Life Events

1. 1488: 1488 Milestone — The Cape of Good Hope was first reached by Bartolomeu Dias on 12 March 1488, opening the important sea route to India and the Far East, but European exploration of Africa itself remained very limited during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Historical Fact-Check Quiz: European exploration of Africa

True or False: “The Phoenicians' alleged circumnavigation of Africa, reported by Herodotus, was believed to be historically accurate because the sailors observed the sun standing to their right in the north.”

Answer (FALSE ❌): Herodotus actually found this observation impossible to believe because he was unaware of the Earth's spherical shape.

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