With the exploits of Prince Henry the Navigator in the 1400s, Portugal was the first European country to go beyond the known limits of northern Africa, exploring the lower west coast and returning to Portugal with captured slaves and other riches. In 1442, the Portuguese began a trade that would not end until the 1800s; producing gold and slaves for the country. However, the Portuguese did not invent slavery. It dates back to the ancient Greeks keeping slaves, and Moses leading the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt.

Vasco da Gama in 1498, reinforced Portugal’s control of the slave trade during a voyage that sailed around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean. This epic discovery of a sea route to the east was soon followed by the establishment of Portuguese colonies on the continent’s coast that produced spiraling riches in the slave trade for Portugal. Rumors of wealth in this newly discovered region captured the interest of other European powers, including England, Spain, Holland, Denmark and France. Within a few years, Africa’s coastal regions became home to thousands of European colonists, traders and explorers who bought and plundered the valuable resources of the native inhabitants.

Serious exploration of the continent’s interior took place during the 18th and 19th centuries with such luminaries as James Bruce, Mungo Park, Martin Liechtenstein, Hugh Clapperton, Richard and John Lander, Heinrich Barth, Sir Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, James Augustus Grant, Sir Samuel White Baker, David Livingstone, and the hundreds of Christian missionaries who ventured inland to live among the natives.

With the founding of the African Association in 1788, many of these white explorers traveled throughout Africa under the auspices of this and other respected associations. The most famous and enduring of these illustrious explorers was the internationally renowned David Livingstone whose activities in the deepest regions of the continent proved invaluable in the mapping of Africa’s interior. His most famous recorded meeting, after the outside world had received no news of his whereabouts and feared for his safety, came when he was found by the American journalist/explorer Henry M. Stanley, whose infamous words on meeting Livingstone, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?," have immortalized both of them.

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