Queens' College and the 'Province of Freedom'
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Frontispiece map indicating the route of Mungo Park's expedition (West side).
Author: Mungo Park
Title: Journal of a mission to the interior of Africa, in the year 1805 (London, 1815)
Shelfmark: Y.1.21
![As secretary of the African Institution, Thomas Harrison (Queens’ m. 1797) oversaw the posthumous publication of Mungo Park’s <i>Journal of a mission to the interior of Africa</i> (1806). In this, Park‘s quest to locate the source of the River Niger had been supported by paternalistic and imperialist interests that sought to ‘civilise’ the populace and exploit African resources. Park’s expeditions made use of the existing infrastructure and institutions put in place by the slave trade. As a result, his book provides a rare perspective on how the European slave trade had fuelled an internal African trade, leading to a violent age of warlords, refugees, and food shortages. Park was generally ambivalent as to his own position on slavery, although he did state that given ‘the present unenlightened state of their minds…the effect [of abolition on ‘natives’] would neither be so extensive or beneficial, as many wise and worthy persons fondly expect’. Yet, by taking an active role in publishing this final instalment of Park’s accounts following his violent death in Africa, Thomas Harrison and the African Institution sought to appropriate Park’s discoveries in support of their own ‘civilising’ mission in Africa.
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<b>Author:</b> Mungo Park<br>
<b>Title:</b><i> Journal of a mission to the interior of Africa, in the year 1805 </i> (London, 1815)<br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> Y.1.21](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/Enslavement-Salvation/Queens-College-Province-of-Freedom/i-svHMPBj/0/30f94602/Ti/Y-001-021-001-Ti.jpg)
