Samuel White Baker

Sir Samuel White Baker

Sir Samuel White Baker Pasha (born June 8, 1821 in London , † December 30, 1893 on his estate Sandford Orleigh near Newton Abbot in Devon ) was a British explorer of Africa .

Life

Baker's father had achieved considerable wealth as a merchant in a managerial position at the British East India Company and wanted his eldest son to succeed him. After training in England and Germany , Baker left the company because he saw no future as a businessman. On August 3, 1843, he married Henrietta Biddulph Martin and went to Mauritius in the same year . From there he traveled to Ceylon in 1846 , where he founded a large farm in Nuwara Eliya and farmed it together with his brother Valentine . After Henrietta's death in 1855, he followed for a short timeScotland , then he traveled to Southeast Europe and Asia Minor . In 1856 he directed the construction of a railway connection in Dobruja . He then made further trips that took him to Vidin in 1859 , where he took part in an auction of European slaves. He bought the eighteen-year-old Flóra Szász free, who then became his companion, then his partner and in 1865 his wife under the name Florence Baker .

In 1861 he began his travels in Africa (see below). For his services he was on 10 November 1866 by Queen Victoria to the Knights defeated. Due to the (in their eyes dubious) origin of his wife, Baker was not socially recognized by the Queen and thus also by the leading circles in Great Britain. In the same year he received gold medals from the Royal Geographical Society and the Geographical Society of Paris. In the spring of 1869 he accompanied the Crown Prince (and later King Edward VII ) on a trip to Egypt. In 1874, Baker acquired the Sandford Orleigh estate in south Devon . In the following years he made further trips to Cyprus , India , Japan and the USA . He traveled to Egypt several times to winter . In 1893 he died on Sandford Orleigh.

In Sudan

Research trip

Florence and Samuel Baker

Originally, Baker planned in 1861 an extensive hunting trip to Egypt and Sudan . He was wealthy and a passionate big game hunter. It became his first expedition to Central Africa. This was undertaken - as he writes - "to discover the sources of the Nile, in the hope of meeting the East African expedition under Captains Speke and Grant somewhere on Lake Victoria". Baker spent a year on the Sudanese-Abyssinian border learning Arabic and exploring the Atbara and other tributaries of the Nile. He found that the Nile sediment came from Abyssinia . After this stay he traveled to Khartoum to follow the course of the White Nile .

Accompanied by Florence, he set off from Khartoum in December 1862 with his own caravan up the Nile. Its destination was the sources of the White Nile. In Gondokoro he met on 15 February to John Speke and James Grant , of Zanzibar from the Victoria had advanced and now down the Nile were on the way home. Baker found the two of them rather exhausted and torn. He supplied them with new clothes and turned south again. During his search, Baker discovered Lake Albert and the Murchison Falls , one of the greatest attractions in Africa, in March 1864 . On this expedition he also saw the still little-known mountain masses, the snow caps of the Ruwenzori massif, first sighted by Henry A. Stanley on May 24, 1888, "shimmering indistinctly through the haze of the plain" and gave it the name "Blue Mountains" (" Blue Mountains ") without realizing its meaning. In May 1865 he was back in Khartoum. In October he returned to England with his wife, whom he had meanwhile married.

The couple must have made a strange impression on the locals when they changed their clothes in the middle of the wilderness and he in a suit and she in a long dress, dressed in Victorian fashion, both with hats, were sitting at a table enjoying the evening.

Governor of Equatoria

In 1869 he was appointed governor of the province of Equatoria for four years by the Khedive Ismail and received the rank of fariq (rank of divisional commander in the then Egyptian army) and the title of pasha . His mission was to conquer the country south of the Gondokoro , to stop the slave trade and to open trade there. 1,200 soldiers were made available to him for this expedition. In February 1870 he went up the White Nile, spent the rainy season at the mouth of the Bahr el-Seraf and through it reached Gondokoro with 6 small steamers and a fleet of sailing ships on April 15, 1871, which he, in honor of the Khedive, Ismailia named. Then he fought as far as Unjoro and in May 1872 declared the area an Egyptian protectorate. In April 1873 he returned to Gondokoro and left Equatoria after the end of his term in May 1873. His successor as Governor of Equatoria was Charles George Gordon .

factories

• The rifle and the hound in Ceylon . - London: John Murray, 1853 <New edition: Stackpole Books, 2002. - ISBN 1589761960 > - online
• Eight years' wanderings in Ceylon . - London: Longman, 1855 - E-Text
• The Albert Nyanza, great basin of the Nile, and explorations of the Nile sources . 2 vol. (London 1866) E-Text
• The Nile tributaries of Abyssinia . (London 1867), E-Text
• Cast up by the Sea . Macmillan & Co., London 1868, E-Text
• Ismailia . 2 vols. (London 1874), volume 1 ,
• Cyprus as I saw it in 1879 . (London 1879)
• Wild Beasts and their Ways .
• True tales for my Grandsons .

German translations:

• The Albert N'yanza, the Great Basin of the Nile and the exploration of the Nile springs; Martin, Johann EA [transl.], 1868, E-Text
• Cyprus in 1879; Oberländer, Richard [transl.], 1880
• The tributaries of the Nile in Abyssinia; Steger, Friedrich [transl.], E-Text

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Knights and Dames: A – BEC at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
2. ^ Henry A. Stanley: Stanley in Africa . Ed .: AH Godbey, AM Donohue & Henneberry, Chicago 1889.
3. ↑ Ludwig Amadeus of Savoy, Duke of Abruzzo: The Ruwenzori. Exploration and first ascent of its highest peaks . Ed .: Dr. F. de Filippi. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1909, p. 2 .

literature

• T. Douglas Murray and A. Silva White: Sir Samuel Baker, A Memoir . Macmillan & Co., London 1895.
• Georg Brunold (Ed.), Nilfieber. The race to the sources. The Other Library, Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1993, pp. 191–220 and 325–346.

Web links

Commons : Samuel Baker  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Samuel White Baker in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry to Baker; Sir; Samuel White (1821-1893) in the Royal Society Archives , London