Africa
They started in January 1899, leaving Karlovac for Trieste, Italy. They visited Alexandria and Cairo, then walked along the river Nile toward Sudan. After returning to Cairo, they headed to Port Said, Djibouti, and Aden, reaching Bab el Mandeb. After traveling to Obock back in Djibouti, they eventually ended up in Harar and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
There, on the recommendation of several influential Europeans, Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia provided them with an escort of 300 people to continue their expedition to the south. Mirko was appointed governor of the southern province of Ethiopia with his brother Stjepan as his lieutenant-governor. They spent three years defining the border between Ethiopia and Kenya, bringing the tribes under the unified government of Menelik II. Their expedition and military camps near Lake Turkana (Lake Rudolf) were named Seljanville and still appear on maps today.
The greatest benefit of the journey was that they expanded the sovereignty of Ethiopia to the right side of the river Omo. The current borders between the states of Ethiopia, Sudan, and Kenya around Lake Turkana are the same as drafted by the Seljan explorers at that time. In 1902, due to political tension, they left, only to return after the end of hostilities between imperial Britain and France (cf. Fashoda Incident).
They were highly regarded by the emperor Menalik II, and received many gifts, some of which are today in the possession of their families; some others are on display in the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb. It is obvious today that the journeys of the two explorers were partly influenced or disrupted by world politics. Nonetheless their initial intention was to enrich their lives and the world with new knowledge and understanding of the world.
Read more about this topic: Mirko And Stjepan Seljan
Famous quotes containing the word africa:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“I know no East or West, North or South, when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)