Exploration, knowledge, and empire in Africa, the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, 1886-1890

grantor: University of TorontoThe Emin Pasha Relief Expedition travelled from the mouth of the Congo River to Zanzibar between 1886 and 1890. The Expedition's ostensible purpose was to bring relief supplies to Emin Pasha, the governor of Equatoria, in the Egyptian Sudan. However, the Expedition was also linked to the formation of the Imperial British East Africa Company and to Leopold II of Belgium's nascent Congo Free State. The Expedition's aftermath included months of public debate in Britain and elsewhere about its purpose and conduct, as well as broader discussion of the nature of European travel in Africa. Within Africa, the Expedition attempted to create a new route between the upper Congo River and Lake Albert. In this effort it built on and competed with the east-coast based traders active in the region, thus becoming part of a broader process of violent transformation on the expanding frontier of long-distance trade. To date, scholarly and popular writing about the Expedition have focused on its place in European imperial politics and on its European participants. This thesis employs newly available primary sources to examine previously neglected aspects of the Expedition and of late nineteenth century travel in East-Central Africa. Drawing on recent work in the sociology of science and technology, it examines the ways in which European travellers made use of African expertise and resources for travel. It traces the dynamic links the Expedition created between persons, institutions, objects, texts, and the physical environment in East-Central Africa and elsewhere. It provides an opportunity to study the construction of agency and identity, as well as the ways in which power was constituted and deployed in specific interactions between Africans and Europeans. These interactions were part of a mutual, but contested construction of Africa and Africans on which subsequent European imperial activities in the region were based. Further, because this Expedition was so well-documented, it allows an intensive study of the strategies of the its Zanzibari porters. Accounts of the Expedition also provide a unique opportunity to study the dynamics of unequal access to food within large European-led caravans, using the concept of entitlement.Ph.D