Mungo Park at the Opening of Britain's Imperial Africa [15min]

The British in sub-Saharan Africa left no long sagas other than Livingstone, Rorke's Drift and Mafeking. Africa had fewer stories to inspire British writers and film makers. Perhaps only the missionaries ever really understood the continent. British slave traders had raided West Africa since the 1560s but, at that stage, there was no attempt to go further south on a regular basis. In 1620 English mariners claimed the Cape in the name of James I, but he didn't want it. The East India Company could not afford the bureaucracy of governor and military garrison. At this point Mungo Park began to appear in the British gallery of famous explorers. "This Sceptred Isle: Empire" is a narrative history of the British Empire from Ireland in the 12th century to the independence of India in the 20th, told in 90 programmes written by historian Christopher Lee and narrated by actor Juliet Stevenson. (You may listen again online to the five most recent episodes of "Empire".)

In 1648 the Dutch showed more interest and planted and reaped fresh food for their vessels to and from the East Indies. Here was the start of Cape Town's true value as a staging post. The British were too involved at that stage in other parts of their growing empire and so left it to the Dutch. Britain's proper interest in the Cape came in the latter part of the 18th century and war with the French. They wanted to occupy the Cape to stop the French grabbing the harbour and using it as a base to intercept British shipping to and from India. The bigger expeditions were by then taking place further to the north and west.

Mungo Park (1771-1806) was born in Foulshiels and for two years studied medicine at Edinburgh. Thanks to a meeting then friendship with the botanist Sir Joseph Banks (1744-1820), then president of the Royal Society, he was appointed assistant surgeon for the ship Worcester sailing to Sumatra. Park persuaded the board of the Africa Association, to let him on their expedition in 1795 to"...pass on to the river Niger, either by way of the Bambouk, or by such other route as should be found most convenient", and he began a journey into the West African hinterland that lasted more than a year and a half. His job was to chart the Niger's course from rise to estuary and report on the towns of Timbuctoo and Houssa. He was rescued from illness on that trip by a slave trader. In 1799 he published Travels in the Interior of Africa, which brought him a good income, celebrity and the chance to settle in Scotland. In 1799 he married at lived a quiet life as a surgeon in Peebles. By 1805 he wanted to return to Africa. In November 1805, Park and four others set off in canoes for the further reaches of the Niger. They were attacked at Bousa and all four were lost overboard and drowned.