Exploration of Africa (ENG)

The continent of Africa has always exerted on a strong pull on the imagination of the adventurous, whether through the mystery of its native art and artifacts, the promise of untold riches and the lure of the unknown, or the compelling urge to explore. The Exploration of Africa documents the history of this passion in a large format, with vivid and concise text and hundreds of eye-catching, rarely seen illustrations. Though the mouth of the Congo River was discovered by Portuguese explorers in 1483, much of the African continent remained terra incognita until the eighteenth century, when merchants and arms traders opened trade routes within the continent, while other explorers pursued dreams of mythical cities and exorbitant treasures. In 1871, the journey of New York Times journalist Henry Morton Stanley to rescue the explorer David Livingstone captured the public imagination, and sparked a craze for African art and artifacts that lasted into the first half of the twentieth century. After the continent was partitioned by the major colonial powers at the Berlin Conference of 1885, school textbooks featured edifying images of African natives and makers of commercial goods used stereotyped portrayals of natives in their advertisements, belying the fact that, deep within the continent, rapacious profiteers were turning the jungles into the heart of darkness that Joseph Conrad later documented. Richly illustrated in lavish full color, The Exploration of Africa offers the unique opportunity to share the sights and impressions of the actual explorers both in their words and with photographs of what they saw and the chance to see how their adventures resonated in the public imagination, with reproductions of the art and ephemera, newspaper and magazine illustrations, that were inspired by them. Jean de La Gu rivi re was head of the as head of the Africa/Asia department of the French newspaper Le Monde from 1970 to 1995. During his tenure, he traveled the length and breadth of Africa, and has published several books and articles on its history and culture. He is also a regular contributor to the Geopolitique Africain review published in France and the United States.

MOJE KNIHOVNY