a brief note on European and African perspectives in travel literature
A Hausa explorer of western Europe.
The study of written history is in many ways, a study of perspectives.
In the parts of Africa where the most accessible accounts about the region’s past used to be the travel literature of European visitors, the study of African history was a study of European perspectives of Africa. The Eurocentric perspective of travelers such as James Bruce in 18th century Ethiopia, and Heinrich Barth in 19th century West Africa, informed much of their understanding of African societies.
However, there are a few sections in these European travelogues in which the African perspective of their guests is reproduced, revealing how the Europeans were seen by their hosts.
The Scottish traveler James Bruce, who visited Ethiopia in order to find the source of the Nile, was hospitably received by the ruling Empress Mentewwab at her palace in QwesQwam near Gondar. But the empress found Bruce's reasons for travel to be rather odd; remarking to Bruce that "life furnishes us with the perverseness and contradiction of human nature!, You have come from Jerusalem, through vile Turkish governments, and hot, unwholesome climates, to see a river and a bog, no part of which you can carry away."
Ruins of Empress Mentewab's QwesQwam complex near Gondar, Ethiopia.
It’s interesting that Mentewwab's critique of the main objective of James Bruce's entire adventure was retained. The queen wished to visit Jerusalem, which Bruce and many Ethiopian pilgrims had been to, but the Scottish traveler only wished to see the source of the Nile, which from Mentewwab's perspective was a frivolous goal. While the opinions of the African hosts about the European travelers were mostly positive, such as Heinrich Barth's stay in the west African states of Bornu and Sokoto, some instances of conflict blighted African perceptions of the European visitors, and by extension, of European society.
During his stay in Timbuktu around 1851, Heinrich Barth was not so hospitably received by the Fulbe authorities of the Massina empire, whose control over the city was contested by the Tuaregs. One Massina officer repeatedly pestered the German traveler with "insulting language". Barth writes that this Massina officer "Spoke of the Christians [Europeans] in the most contemptuous manner, describing them as sitting like women in the bottom of their steamboats, and doing nothing but eating raw eggs; concluding with the paradoxical statement, which is not very flattering to Europeans, that the idolatrous Bambara [of Segu] were far better people and much farther advanced in civilization than the Christians."
The conflict between Massina and the Tuaregs near Timbuktu who protected Barth, likely influenced the Massina officer's negative opinion of European society, which he ranked lower than his 'pagan' rivals, the Bambara of Segu. Barth also blamed Mungo Park for propagating the stereotype that Europeans were fond of raw eggs, something that was disliked by their West African guests.
Colorized engraving of Heinrich Barth's arrival at Timbuktu in 1853
Just like most European writers had formulated their perspective of Africa without actually traveling to the continent, similar perceptions about European society were mostly made by Africans who hadn't been there. Fortunately, a number of African travelers who had been visiting Europe began documenting their accounts in the 19th century, forming a more accurate perspective of European society.
One such remarkable account was left by the Comorian traveler Selim Abakari who visited Germany and Russia in 1896, providing both an African perspective of Europe, and his European hosts' perspective of their African guest.
For example, Selim notes that after refusing to order wine and pork, the servants of the Hotel where he was staying in st. Petersburg revealed that they were also Muslims to the astonishment of Selim, who wrote of the encounter; "I remained silent! So in the countries of the whites, there were such Muslims!."
Traveling across the Russian countryside, he encountered people in Kalmykia who revered him as one of their spirits "who had landed from his mountain," He met people in Samara who fled from him "thinking he was the devil," and people in Semipalatinsk who "acclaimed him as a King" and thought he was the leader of his white companions.
Selim's account is one of a handful of travelogues by Africans who visited Europe, but it’s mostly concerned with northern Europe. A few decades before Selim embarked on his journey, an adventurous African visitor from the Hausalands traveled to England and Germany, providing a rare description of Western European society by an African.
The account of this Hausa traveler in Western Europe and his observations of European society are the subject of my latest Patreon article,
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