Mungo Park
1771 – 1806 · aged 35
Scottish naturalist and explorer of the African continent
- Born
- 11 Sept 1771 · Scotland
- Died
- 1806 · Bussa
Life timeline
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- 11 Sept 1771BornBorn in Scotland
- 1806DiedDied in Bussa
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Meanwhile in the world
Major world events during their lifetime (1771 – 1806).
- 1789 – 1799French Revolution
Biography
Mungo Park (10 September 1771 – 1806) was a Scottish explorer of West Africa. After an exploration of the upper Niger River around 1796, he wrote a popular and influential travel book titled Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in which he theorised the Niger and Congo merged to become the same river, though it was later proven that they are different rivers. He was killed during a second expedition, having successfully travelled about two-thirds of the way down the Niger.
If the African Association was the "beginning of the age of African exploration" by Europeans, then Mungo Park was its first successful explorer; he set a standard for all who followed. Park was the first Westerner to have recorded travels in the central portion of the Niger, and through his popular book introduced the European public to a vast unexplored continent which influenced future European explorers and colonial ambitions in Africa.
Text from the Wikipedia article Mungo Park (explorer), CC BY-SA 4.0
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