Product Description

Mungo Park's "Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa" has long been regarded as a classic of African travel literature. In fulfilling his mission to find the Niger River and in documenting its potential as an inland waterway for trade, Park was significant in opening Africa to European economic interests. His modest, low-key heroism made it possible for the British public to imagine themselves as a welcomed force in Africa. As a tale of adventure and survival, it has inspired the imaginations of readers since its first publication in 1799 and writers from Wordsworth and Melville to Conrad, Hemingway, and T. Coreghessan Boyle have acknowledged the influence of Park's narrative on their work.Unlike the large expeditions that followed him, Park travelled only with native guides or alone. Without much of an idea of where he was going, he relied entirely on local people for food, shelter, and directions throughout his eventful eighteen-month journey. While his warm reaction to the people he met made him famous as a sentimental traveller, his chronicle also provides a rare written record of the lives of ordinary people in West Africa before European intervention.His accounts of war, politics, and the spread of Islam, as well as his constant confrontations with slavery as practised in eighteenth-century West Africa, are as valuable today as they were in 1799. In preparing this new edition, editor Kate Ferguson Marsters presents the complete text and includes reproductions of all the original maps and illustrations. Park's narrative serves as a crucial text in relation to scholarship on the history of slavery, colonial enterprise, and nineteenth-century imperialism. The availability of this full edition will give a new generation of readers access to a travel narrative that has inspired other readers and writers over two centuries and will enliven scholarly discussion in many fields.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #558783 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
"This edition is well analyzed, with a lengthy introduction and voluminous footnotes that significantly add to an understanding of the original document. Important for any collection on Africa ..."--Library Journal "Western Sudan ... means for me an episode in Mungo Park's life. It means for me the vision of a young, emaciated, fair-haired man, clad simply in a tattered shirt and worn-out breeches, gasping painfully for breath and lying on the ground in the shade of an enormous African tree (species unknown), while from a neighboring village of grass huts a charitable black-skinned woman is approaching him with a calabash full of pure cold water, a simple draught which, according to himself, seems to have effected a miraculous cure." - Joseph Conrad, from Geography and Some Explorers "In a time when the world has grown tame and we have to manufacture our adventures, Mungo Park's Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa is both an education and a delight. The Africa he entered was uncharted and unknown, the farthest outpost of a truly wild and richly mysterious planet. He was the first European to go there and come back again, and he rewarded his society - and ours - with a geographical and anthropological marvel of a book, an adventure story to cap them all." - T. Coraghessan Boyle

T. Coraghessan Boyle
"In a time when the world has grown tame and we have to manufacture our adventures, Mungo Park's Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa is both an education and a delight. The Africa he entered was uncharted and unknown, the farthest outpost of a truly wild and richly mysterious planet. He was the first European to go there and come back again, and he rewarded his society - and ours - with a geographical and anthropological marvel of a book, an adventure story to cap them all."

Customer Reviews

The Intrepid Mungo Park
Kate Ferguson Marsters' edition of Mungo Park's TRAVELS is an excellent example of the travel narrative - easily comparable with the Journals of Lewis & Clark or Francis Parkman's OREGON TRAIL. The book is broken into three parts: Park's travel narrative , Marsters' Introduction & Major Rennell's Geographical Illustrations Of Mr. Park's Journey (which is rather dry and dated).

The main work is a narrative of Park's travels from Barra, on the West African coast, to the town of Silla, just west of Jenne and his return to the western coast. Park provides many interesting details and asides, including that of Mumbo Jumbo (also mentioned by Francis Moore) for disciplining wayward wives. Park also spends a fair amount of time explaining local governments and social norms. Throughout, the account attempts some degree of neutrality while noting acts of kindness and avarice by various individuals and rulers; although, not surprisingly, he explicitly criticizes the Moors who continually interfered with his progress and those who robbed and stripped him. Perhaps his most disturbing account is of the female slave who becomes too sick to continue traveling with the coffle. The entire work puts black slaves and their families in a very sympathetic light and shows the slave trade at its worst; although, due to the continuing conditions of slavery and internal conquest pre-dating major European involvement in the trade, Park stated that the termination of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade would not provide as great a benefit to the populace in Africa as many hoped.

The Introduction is important in providing the history of Park's early years, the important role of the African Association and its leader, Sir Joseph Banks. More importantly the Introduction deals with the Bryan Edwards controversy. Richard Burton and Orlando Patterson's criticisms have held that internal African slavery and slave trading was not nearly so prevalent as suggested by Park. In light of this, Marsters' statement that Joseph Banks, a critic of slavery, had to approve every piece of Edward's editing becomes extremely important. In addition, it is made clear that the reason for the stylistic differences is that the original TRAVELS was a book derived from Park's notes whereas the published work of his second, ill-fated journey was merely a compilation of those notes retrieved from the dead man's party!

All-in-all, an excellent and informative read!

SAYING THAT MUNGO PARK DISCOVERED RIVER NIGER IS RIDICULOUS
This book is not too bad, but it would have been better if its author and editor were frank with their "facts".
Mungo Park, an inquisitive Scottish doctor and explorer, displayed a lot of courage in his adventures. He was steadfast and result-oriented. However, it is wrong for anybody to assume that he discovered the 'Nile of the Negroes', (as the River Niger was then called). The indigenous Africans who lived by the river banks knew its course long before Mungo Park's forefathers were born. They showed the Scot the way!
Thus, claiming that Dr. Park discovered River Niger is absurd. It is as ridiculous as claiming that the first African who sailed across River Thames discovered the English river.