Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817) was a Swiss traveller and geographer from Lausanne who later moved to England and found employment with the African Association.  His mission from its President, Sir Joseph Banks, was to travel into the interior of Africa and discover the source of the Niger.  As preparation for his travels, Burckhardt attended Cambridge University to learn Arabic.

Burckhardt is best known today for being the first European since the time of the Crusades to travel to Petra in Jordan. He ‘rediscovered’ the city on 22 August 1812.  From there, his travels took him to Mecca, Mount Sinai and St Catherine’s Monastery; eventually he arrived in Cairo and from there hoped to return to England.  While waiting for a means of transport, he met other renowned explorers, including the Italian Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778-1823), and sent reports of his travels back to the committee of the African Association in London.  However, he was never to make it home and he died in Cairo in 1817.

His journals were published by the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa in 1822 as Travels in Syria and the Holy Land.  The frontispiece is a portrait of Burckhardt in Arabic dress.  Throughout the book, he describes the lengths he went to avoid arousing suspicion while travelling as a foreigner, including adopting local dress.  At one point travelling with a Greek priest, Burckhardt recalls,

His description of me to the natives varied with circumstances; sometimes I was a Greek lay brother, sent to him by the Patriarch, a deception which could not be detected by my dress, as the priesthood is not distinguished by any particular dress, unless it be the blue turban, which they generally wear; sometimes he described me as a physician who was in search of herbs; and occasionally he owned that my real object was to examine the country.

Later, travelling from Damascus to Cairo ‘through a diversity of Bedouin tribes’, Burckhardt assumed,

… the most common Bedouin dress, took no baggage with me, and mounted a mare that was not likely to excite the cupidity of the Arabs.’

Burckhardt also travelled under an Arabic name, Sheikh Ibrahim ibn Abdallah; he was buried as a Muslim in Cairo and his Arabic name appears on his tombstone.

The Library at the Devon and Exeter Institution has a significant collection of accounts of travels during the Age of Enlightenment, including several of explorations in Africa. At the time they were published, these various accounts greatly increased European knowledge of the geography of Africa. They may even have helped to dispel long-held European myths relating to the peoples of Africa. However, early attempts to explore the interior of the African continent undoubtedly paved the way for the imperialist ‘Scramble for Africa’ from the 1880s onwards which saw the continent divided into colonial territories.  Historical accounts such as Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria and the Holy Land are a resource to be challenged and interrogated and the Institution is well-placed to foster dialogue and debate and to encourage diverse responses to collections.