Jump to content

Heinrich Barth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinrich Barth
Heinrich Barth
Born16 February 1821(1821-02-16)
Hamburg,German Confederation
Died25 November 1865(1865-11-25)(aged 44)
Berlin,Kingdom of Prussia,German Confederation
NationalityGerman
Occupation(s)African explorer and scholar
AwardsPatron's Medalof theRoyal Geographical Society(1856)
Companionship of the Bath(1862)

Johann Heinrich Barth(/bɑːrθ,bɑːrt/;[1][2]German:[baʁt];16 February 1821 – 25 November 1865) was a German explorer of Africa and scholar.

Barth is thought to be one of the greatest of the European explorers of Africa, as his scholarly preparation, ability to speak and write Arabic, learning African languages, and character meant that he carefully documented the details of the cultures he visited. He was among the first to comprehend the uses of oral history of peoples, and collected many. He established friendships with African rulers and scholars during his five years of travel (1850–1855). After the deaths of two European companions, he completed his travels with the aid of Africans. Afterwards, he wrote and published a five-volume account of his travels in both English and German. It has been invaluable for scholars of his time and since.

Early life and education

[edit]

Heinrich Barth was born inHamburgon 16 February 1821. He was the third child of Johann Christoph Heinrich Barth and his wife Charlotte KarolinenéeZadow. Johann had come from a relatively poor background but had built up a successful trading business. Both parents were orthodoxLutheransand they expected their children to conform to their strict ideas on morality and self-discipline.[3]From the age of eleven Barth attended the prestigious high school, theGelehrtenschule des Johanneums,in Hamburg.[4]He was very studious but not popular with his classmates. He excelled at languages and taught himself some Arabic.[5]Barth left school aged 18 in 1839 and immediately enrolled at theUniversity of Berlinwhere he attended courses offered by the geographerKarl Ritter,the classical scholarAugust Böckhand the historianJakob Grimm.After his first year, he interrupted his studies and went on a tour of Italy visitingVenice,Florence,Rome,NaplesandSicily,returning to Germany in the middle of May 1841.[6]In the vacation of the following year, he visited the Rhineland and Switzerland.[7]He defended his doctoral thesis on the trade relations ofancient Corinthin July 1844.[8][9]

Visit to North Africa and the Near East

[edit]

Barth formed a plan to undertake a grand tour of north Africa and the Middle East which his father agreed to fund. He left his parents' home at the end of January 1845 and first visited London where he spent two months learningArabic,visiting theBritish Museumand securing the protection of the British consuls for his trip. While in London, he met thePrussianambassador to Britain,Christian von Bunsen,who would later play an important role in his trip to central Africa. He left London and travelled across France and Spain. On 7 August he caught a ferry fromGibraltartoTangiersfor his first visit to Africa.[10][11][12]From Tangier, he made his way overland acrossNorth Africa.He also travelled through Egypt, ascending theNiletoWadi Halfaand crossing the desert to the port ofBereniceon theRed Sea.While in Egypt, he was attacked and wounded by robbers. Crossing theSinai peninsula,he traversedPalestine,Syria,Asia Minor,TurkeyandGreece,everywhere examining the remains of antiquity.[13]He returned to his parents' home in Hamburg on 27 December 1847 after a trip of almost three years.[14]For a time he was engaged there asPrivatdozent.He described some of his travels in the first volume of his book,Wanderungen durch die Küstenländer des Mittelmeeres,(Walks through the coastal states of the Mediterranean) which was published in 1849.[15]The intended second volume never appeared.[16]

Expedition to the Sudan, the Sahara and Western Africa

[edit]
Route of Barth's journey through Africa between 1850 and 1855
Heinrich Barth approachingTimbuktuon 7 September 1853 as depicted byMartin Bernatz.
Memorial tablet at the Barth-House in Agadez

Christian Bunsen,thePrussianambassador to Westminster, encouraged the appointment of scholars, including Barth andAdolf Overweg,a Prussian astronomer, to the expedition ofJames Richardson,an explorer of theSahara.[17]Richardson had been selected by the British government to open up commercial relations with the states of the central and westernSudan.[13]The party leftMarseillesin late 1849, and departed fromTripoliearly in 1850. They crossed theSahara Desertwith great difficulty. He arrived in the city ofAgadezin October 1850 where he stayed for several days. Today a memorial tablet honours him as the first European to have ever entered the city.

The deaths of Richardson (March 1851) and Overweg (September 1852), who died of unknown diseases, left Barth to carry on the scientific mission alone. Barth was the first European to visitAdamawain 1851. When he returned to Tripoli in September 1855, his journey had extended over 24° of latitude and 20° of longitude, from Tripoli in the north to Adamawa andCameroonin the south, and fromLake ChadandBagirmiin the east toTimbuktu(September 1853) in the west – upward of 12,000 miles (19,000 km). He studied minutely the topography, history, civilizations, languages, and resources of the countries he visited.[13]His success as an explorer and historian of Africa was based both on his patient character and his scholarly education.

Barth was interested in the history and culture of the African peoples, rather than the possibilities of commercial exploitation. Due to his level of documentation, his journal has become an invaluable source for the study of 19th-century Sudanic Africa. Although Barth was not the first European visitor who paid attention to the local oral traditions, he was the first who seriously considered its methodology and use for historical research. Barth was the first true European scholar to travel and study in West Africa. Earlier explorers such asRené Caillié,Dixon DenhamandHugh Clappertonhad no academic knowledge.

Barth was fluent in Arabic and severalAfrican languages(Fulani,HausaandKanuri) and was able to investigate the history of some regions, particularly theSonghay Empire.He established close relations with a number of African scholars and rulers, fromUmar I ibn Muhammad al-AmininBornu,through theKatsinaandSokotoregions to Timbuktu. There his friendship withAhmad al-Bakkai al-Kuntiled to his staying in his house; he also received protection from al-Kunti against an attempt to seize him.

Heinrich Barth's house in Timbuktu (in 1908 before its collapse)

After his return to London Barth wrote and published accounts of his travels simultaneously in English and German, under the titleReisen und Entdeckungen in Nord- und Centralafrika(Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa; 1857–1858, 5 volumes., approx. 3,500 pages). The volumes included coloured plates of pictures produced byMartin Bernatzbased on Barth's original sketches.[18]The work was considered one of the finest of its kind, being cited byDarwin.[19]It is still used by historians of Africa, and remains an important scientific work on African cultures of the age. It also provided the first evidence by a European that the Sahara had once been asavanna.[20][21]

Later life

[edit]
Honorary grave of Heinrich Barth in Berlin

Barth returned from Great Britain to Germany, where he prepared a collection ofCentral Africanvocabularies (Gotha, 1862–1866).[22]In 1858 he undertook another journey in Asia Minor, and in 1862 visited the Turkish provinces in Europe.[13]He wrote an account of these travels that was published in Berlin in 1864.[23]

In the following year he was granted a professorship of geography (without chair or regular pay) atBerlin Universityand appointed president of theGeographical Society.[13]His admission to thePrussian Academy of Scienceswas denied, as it was claimed that he had achieved nothing forhistoriographyand linguistics. They did not fully understand his achievements, which have been ratified by scholars over time.

Barth died in Berlin on 25 November 1865 aged 44.[a]His grave is preserved in theProtestantFriedhof III der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde(Cemetery No. III of the congregations ofJerusalem's ChurchandNew Church) inBerlin-Kreuzberg,south ofHallesches Tor.

Legacy and honours

[edit]

Barth is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of African venomous snake,Polemon barthii.[30]

Selected publications

[edit]

For a full list see Wilhelm Koner (1866).[31]

  • Barth, Henricus (1844).Corinthiorum commercii et mercaturae historiae particula(Doctoral Dissertation) (in Latin). Berlin: Typis Unger.
  • Barth, Heinrich (1849).Wanderungen durch die Küstenländer des Mittelmeeres: ausgeführt in den Jahren 1845, 1846 und 1847, Volume 1[Walks through the coastal states of the Mediterranean: executed in the years 1845, 1846 and 1847] (in German). Berlin: Hertz.Only the first volume was published.
  • Barth, Heinrich (1857–1858).Reisen und Entdeckungen in Nord- und Central-afrika in den Jahren 1849 bis 1855 (5 volumes)(in German). Gotha: J. Perthes.Volume 1,Volume 2,Volume 3,Volume 4,Volume 5
  • Barth, H. (1860).Dr. H. Barth's reise von Trapezunt durch die nördliche hälfte Klein-Asiens nach Scutari im herbst 1858.Gotha: J. Perthes.
  • Barth, H. (1860)."A general historical description of the state of human society in Northern Central Africa".Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London.30:112–128.doi:10.2307/1798293.JSTOR1798293.
  • Barth, Heinrich (1862–1866).Sammlung und bearbeitung central-afrikanischer vokabularien; Collection of vocabularies of Central-African languages (3 Volumes)(in German and English). Gotha: Justas Perthes.Volume 1,Volume 2,Volume 3.
  • Barth, Heinrich (1864).Reise durch das Innere der Europäischen Türkei von Rustchuk über Philippopel, Rilo (Monastir), Bitolia und den Thessalischen Olym nach Saloniki(in German). Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^Kirk-Greene gives the date of Barth's death as 26 November 1865.[24]All other sources give the date as 25 November 1865.[25][26][27]

References

[edit]
  1. ^Kirk-Greene 1962,p. 1.
  2. ^Wells, John C. (2008),Longman Pronunciation Dictionary(3rd ed.), Longman, p. 665,ISBN9781405881180
  3. ^Schubert 1897,pp.1-2.
  4. ^Schubert 1897,pp.4-5.
  5. ^Schubert 1897,pp.6-7.
  6. ^Schubert 1897,pp.8-9.
  7. ^Schubert 1897,p.16.
  8. ^Barth 1844.
  9. ^Kirk-Greene 1962,p. 3.
  10. ^Schubert 1897,pp.19-21.
  11. ^Barth 1849,p.vii.
  12. ^Kirk-Greene 1962,pp. 3–4.
  13. ^abcdeChisholm 1911.
  14. ^Schubert 1897,p.23.
  15. ^Barth 1849.
  16. ^Kirk-Greene 1962,p. 5.
  17. ^Prothero, R. Mansell (1958)."Heinrich Barth and the Western Sudan".The Geographical Journal.124(3): 326–337.doi:10.2307/1790783.ISSN0016-7398.JSTOR1790783.
  18. ^Barth 1857–1858,p.xxiii Vol 1.
  19. ^Darwin 1868,p.308.
  20. ^Barth 1857, vol. 1, chapter IX, pp. 196–199.On p. 199,Barth said, about apetroglyphdepicting ancient hunters in the Sahara, that it "… bears testimony to a state of life very different from that which we are accustomed to see now in these regions,…"
  21. ^de Menocal, Peter B.; Tierney, Jessica E. (2012) "Green Sahara: African humid periods paced by Earth's orbital changes",Nature Education Knowledge3(10): 12. Available at:Nature Education: Knowledge Project
  22. ^Barth 1862–1866.
  23. ^Barth 1864.
  24. ^Kirk-Greene 1962,p. 42.
  25. ^Koner 1866,p.28.
  26. ^Schubert 1897,p.173.
  27. ^Kemper 2012,pp. 364, 390.
  28. ^"Medals and Awards: Gold Medal Recipients".Royal Geographical Society.Retrieved10 September2015.
  29. ^Schubert 1897,p.138.
  30. ^Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011).The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp.ISBN978-1-4214-0135-5.( "Barth", p. 18).
  31. ^Koner 1866,pp.28-31.

Sources

[edit]

Further reading

[edit]
[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related toHeinrich Barth.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Heinrich_Barth&oldid=1241264558"