European exploration of Africa began with Ancient Greeks and Romans, who explored and established settlements in North Africa. Fifteenth century Portugal, especially under Henry the Navigator, probed along the West African coast. Scientific curiosity and Christian missionary spirit soon were subordinated to mercantile considerations, including lucrative trafficking in enslaved persons. Others (Dutch, Spanish, French, English, etc.) joined in African trading, though for centuries European knowledge of Africa's interior was very vague. Much of the blank map was filled in by arduous, often fatal, expeditions in the Nineteenth Century.
Read more about European Exploration Of Africa: Prehistoric Links Between Europe and Africa, Early Historical Exploration of Africa, Europeans in The Middle Ages, Portuguese Expeditions, Dutch Intervention, Other Early European Presence in Africa, 19th Century
Famous quotes containing the words european, exploration and/or africa:
“Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate. Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the “Principe,” has determined the development of European history ever since.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“I call her old. She has one family
Whose claim is good to being settled here
Before the era of colonization,
And before that of exploration even.
John Smith remarked them as he coasted by....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)