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Schuvers motives (I) Schuver's choice of a journey of exploration in north-east Africa is surprising considering that, up to that point, his geographical interests had been directed towards Asia Minor, the Caucasus, and Mesopotamia, as well as the fact that he had learned the Turkish language and had been intending to carry out archaeological excavations. His earlier visits to Egypt had been strictly as a tourist, and these visits, of a kind normally reserved for the European and American elites, had nothing unusual about them. It was his travels in Armenia and north-western Iran that had been remarkable. It would have made more obvious sense if Schuver had ventured into western Asia. [27] Was Schuver's decision inspired solely by a longing for glory, and the realisation that, from a practical point of view, this ambition could best be achieved in the African interior? The famous expeditions undertaken by Burton, Speke, Grant, and Baker, and by Livingstone and Stanley, all mounted between 1858 and 1876, had inspired many other venturers besides Schuver to set out from Khartoum, bound for the wilderness. Between 1872 and 1876 the Austrian, Ernst Marno, made several trips into southern Sudan, while the Germano-Russian Wilhelm Junker travelled in the Sudan from 1876 to 1879. From 1874 on, the German biologist Friedrich Bohndorff was also active in the Sudan, while in 1877 Pellegrino Matteucci had navigated the Blue Nile, although he had given up at Bela Shangul.
Dutch explorers had also ventured into this region. Here, we think especially of Alexandrine Tinne and Benjamin Nachenius. Schuver knew about Tinne's expedition, stranded in the marshes of the Bahr el-Ghazal. [28] In Nachenius' book 'Herinneringen aan Abessinie and Nubia' (Recollections of Abyssinia and Nubia), published in 1878, the author had toyed with the idea of travelling to Zanzibar through Galla country. Schuver had read this work, and he had taken note of Nachenius'intention, but for some time he had clearly pursued the idea no further. [29] He only gave his full attention to the plan when the Turks thwarted his original intention to go to Palmyra. | |
