River of the Gods

River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, & Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile- Candice Millard

Doubleday

Release Date: May 17, 2022

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: For millennia the location of the Nile River’s headwaters was shrouded in mystery. In the 19th century, there was  a frenzy of interest in ancient Egypt. At the same time, European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe – and extend their colonial empires.

Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to claim the prize for England. Burton spoke twenty-nine languages, and was a decorated soldier. He was also mercurial, subtle, and an iconoclastic atheist. Speke was a young aristocrat and Army officer determined to make his mark, passionate about hunting, Burton’s opposite in temperament and beliefs.
 
From the start the two men clashed. They would endure tremendous hardships, illness, and constant setbacks. Two years in, deep in the African interior, Burton became too sick to press on, but Speke did, and claimed he found the source in a great lake that he christened Lake Victoria. When they returned to England, Speke rushed to take credit, disparaging Burton. Burton disputed his claim, and Speke launched another expedition to Africa to prove it. The two became venomous enemies, with the public siding with the more charismatic Burton, to Speke’s great envy. The day before they were to publicly debate,Speke shot himself.
 
Yet there was a third man on both expeditions, his name obscured by imperial annals, whose exploits were even more extraordinary. This was Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who was enslaved and shipped from his home village in East Africa to India. When the man who purchased him died, he made his way into the local Sultan’s army, and eventually traveled back to Africa, where he used his resourcefulness, linguistic prowess and raw courage to forge a living as a guide. Without Bombay and men like him, who led, carried, and protected the expedition, neither Englishman would have come close to the headwaters of the Nile, or perhaps even survived.
 
In River of the Gods Candice Millard has written another peerless story of courage and adventure, set against the backdrop of the race to exploit Africa by the colonial powers.

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Candice Millard's (Hero of the Empire) newest book delves into the search for the source of the White Nile by British explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke and their invaluable, extraordinary guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay. Over multiple trips and many years the men traveled hundred of miles and encountered endless dangers together. With other expedition members, porters, guides, and guards they used (then) Zanzibar as their jumping off point to search for rumored lakes believed to be the source of the Nile River, often nearly starved, died of diseases, insects, and worse. On their second trip, with Burton too ill to continue, Speke and Bombay reached Lake Nyanza (which Speke renamed Lake Victoria), where Speke believed the Nile to originate. Speke didn't prove this to Burton's satisfaction and this doubt was one of the many instances that came between the two explorers to create a rivalry that would last the rest of their lives. 

River of the Gods shows mid-nineteenth century British exploration in all of its complexities: the positive, the negative, and every political, emotional and ethical shade in between. Millard does a good job of balancing Richard Burton and John Speke in the same way. Neither are complete heroes, neither total villains, in their own minds each are completely right in the actions they take and justify themselves along the way. In hindsight we know that the exploration of Africa by England of other countries isn't "just" about the need to fill in blanks on a map- it is leading to complete colonization and further exploitation of people and resources across the continent. We see the contrast of places like Zanzibar: a beautiful paradise of white sandy beaches and clear blue waters, while at the same time one of the worst slave auction sites that bothers even many slavers. Burton is generally someone who takes people as they are, interested in their customs, cultures and languages for what he can learn (whether or not he should) while at the same time being European enough to look down on Africans as a lesser race until the end of his life, while Speke looks down on everyone. What I appreciated about Millard here is that she put everyone's thoughts and actions in the context of their time and not in our modern day sensibilities. We know what we find racist and abhorrent today, so I'd rather know what was the cultural norm at the time and how it changed over the time frame Millard covers, which I thought she did well.   

It is toward the end that she reminds us that there was a third main explorer who deserves as many accolades as Burton and Speke: Sidi Mubarak Bombay. Enslaved as a child, he returned to Africa as an adult and was a trustworthy guide, interpreter, and friend to European explorers like Burton and Speke- and later helped the famous journalist Stanley find Dr. Livingston. Bombay helped shine a light on the native guides and interpreters that Europeans needed to succeed in being "the first" to do so many things, from finding the source of the Nile to climbing Mt. Everest, and that today historians must try to discover the little told stories of these men and women and celebrate them just as much as their more famous (or infamous) European counterparts.

Millard's brilliance for a truly riveting, engaging writing style is evident from page one in River of the Gods, drawing the reader in and refusing to let them go until the final page.  Every step in the exploration, every twist in the bitter verbal sparring between former friends, keeps you emotionally engaged and waiting tensely to see what will happen next.  It isn't just the adventures in Africa that read like adventure stories, it is the entire book.  

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review