How do the life and writings of Sir Richard Burton reveal the connections between geography and empire in the nineteenth century?
History is replete with voyages of discovery undertaken by explorers around the world mainly in search of food, raw material or expansion of empire. A rush for such voyages by the European navigators and explorers was at peak during the nineteenth century.
The Industrial Revolution that began in England in the Reign of George-3 (1760-1820) in fact was the catalyst of foreign expeditions and the one gearing-up exploration voyages. The underlying cause or the impetus behind these adventurous voyages was the procurement of raw material so ardently needed for running the machines. The industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, stretching up to 1870, was in fact a revolution of coal and iron based on the application of steam power to machinery, and other technical innovations. Watt’s rotating engine (1782) and Cartwright’s power loom (1792) were among other inventions, which demonstrated superiority of steam-power-driven machines. By 1860 the railway networks of Britain had almost completed, and the demand for rails, engines and carriages provided immense impetus to a heavy industry for Royal Railways.
The vacuum thus created from the demand for iron and coal became an immediate cause of the myriad explorations and voyages of discovery undertaken by the newly industrial nations of Europe. Although European exploration began in the eighteenth century, its impact on Africa could be seen only after 1870. The period 1769 to 1887 is marked by the European exploration in Africa. This was a time when European nations were desperately struggling for Empire and Colonial Expansion in Africa for reasons other than above. In fact different things attracted the explorers to different places. It was an urge for spice that foreign expeditions undertaken voyages to India, but it was a discovery of diamonds at Kimberley and gold on the Witwatersrand (1886) plus the slaves and land which sparked the influx of Europeans in the continent Africa.
Sir Richard Burton’s Early Life
Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821to 1890), was born at Barham House in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. His father was an officer in the British army. Burton’s wandering thirst that would not let him be, astrayed him into spending much of his time with Gypsies during his early childhood days.Later, he travelled to France and Italy for acquiring preliminary education. But not befitting for Oxford life, he was soon expelled from the Trinity College Oxford and could not continue with his regular studies.
He joined the Army of the British East India Company not as a soldier, but to study the life-style, culture and languages of the East. Once in India, he studied Hindustani and Arabic on his own. He also learned some of the local dialects like Gujarati, Marathi as well as Persian. He had extraordinary knowledge of languages and culture. According to an estimate, he spoke atleast 29 languuages including European, African and Asian and countless other dialects, making him an unparalleled linguist of his time.
Sir Richard Burton’s Explorations, Journeys & Writings
The life story of Richard Burton is filled with wondrous adventures. His most astounding adventure was his travelling alone to Mecca in 1853 in guise to perform the Pilgrimage. To disguise himself as a moslem in this holy trip to Mecca he also had to undergo a small surgery in order to get himself circumcised. In 1854 Burton made a dangerous journey to Ethiopia and Somaliland because according to the laws there, any foreigner caught infiltrating into their land would for no reason be persecuted or beheaded . Then in 1856, accompanying his old friend and companion, John Speke, he returned to East Africa in 1856 to discover the source of river Nile. Lake Tanganyika that they found in 1858 did not also prove the source of the Nile. It was only after six months that they discovered a lake as large as a sea. The newly discovered Victoria Lake was then discovered to be the real source of river Nile.
The best of Burton’s achievement include traveling alone in guise to Mecca to perform pilgrimage; translating into English version ‘The Arabian Nights’ in ten volumes which he wrote in 1880’s and the Kama Sutra; journeying to Africa in quest of Great Lakes that are the real sources of the river Nile; visiting Salt Lake City, Utah. He was declared the third best British swordsman of his time. Richard Burton was knighted in 1886 and later served as British consul in Fernando Po, Trieste as well as Damascus.
Prominent Writing Works of Sir Richard Burton
Al-Medina and Meccah (1855)
First Footsteps in East Africa (1856)
The City of the Saints (1861)
Wanderings in West Africa (1863)
Letters From the Battlefields of Paraguay (1870)
His wife Isabel Burton burned all of her husband’s private journals upon his death and then went on to write a biography titled ‘Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton’ in two volumes. Fawn Brodie explains in her own words Isabel’s ardent desire to write her husband’s biography, “her image not of the man she could wholly have loved but of the man she felt he should have been–a good Catholic, a husband faithful in thought as well as act, and a refined and modest man.”
References
Farwell, Byron, (1990) - Burton: A biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Burton, Richard Francis, (1995) - Personal narrative of a pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah. Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Wolfgang Goethe University.
Burton, Richard Francis, (2000) - First footsteps in East Africa, or, an exploration of Harar. Ko¨ln: Ko¨nemann
Casada, James A. (1990) - Sir Richard F. Burton: A biobibliographical study. London: Mansell.
Burton, Isabel (1999) - The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services.
Tags: England, exploration, Richard Burton, UK, voyages
