Hugh Clapperton, Scottish explorer and diplomat, made two expeditions into the interior of West Africa, the first across the Sahara Desert and the second inland from the Bight of Benin. His first expedition in 1822-24, crossed the Sahara to Borno. A second expedition, also an official mission of the British Government, was undertaken in 1825-27 and is the subject of this volume. Clapperton's diaries have been transcribed and reproduced in a form as close as possible to the original raw material.

Hugh Clapperton, Scottish explorer and diplomat, made two expeditions into the interior of West Africa, the first across the Sahara Desert and the second inland from the Bight of Benin. His first expedition in 1822-24, crossed the Sahara to Borno. A second expedition, also an official mission of the British Government, was undertaken in 1825-27 and is the subject of this volume. Clapperton's diaries have been transcribed and reproduced in a form as close as possible to the original raw material.

Hugh Clapperton was one of the first British explorers to enter the central Sahara, but his journals have never been published before. Recently discovered in South Africa, they show him to be one of the most sensitive and sympathetic travellers, his observations untainted by any sense of moral superiority. Hugh Clapperton has a sharp eye for detail, be it wind-stiller magicians, the effect of the evil eye or slave skeletons clustered around well heads. He hears musicians in jackal-headed masks and bagpipes in a wedding procession. He has a gift for friendship, feasting locals, offering himself to women and delighting in the company of both dignified tribal sheikhs and fearsome renegades like Mustapha the Red.

As a dutiful Victorian daughter, the author was thirty before being freed (by her parents' deaths) to do as she chose. She went to West Africa in 1893 and again in 1895, to investigate the beliefs and customs of the inland tribes and also to collect zoological specimens. She was appalled by the 'thin veneer of rubbishy white culture' imposed by British officials and was not afraid to say so.

Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past offers a comprehensive assessment of new directions in the historiography of West Africa. With twenty-four chapters by leading researchers in the study of West African history and cultures, the volume examines the main trends in multiple fields including the critical interpretation of Arabic sources; new archaeological surveys of trans-Saharan trade; the discovery of sources in Latin America relating to pan-Atlantic histories; and the continuing analysis of oral histories. The volume is dedicated to Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, whose work inspired the intellectual reorientations discussed in its chapters and stands as the clearest formulation of the book’s central focus on the relationship between political conjunctures and the production of sources. Contributors are: Benjamin Acloque, Karin Barber, Seydou Camara, Mamadou Diawara, Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, François-Xavier Fauvelle, Nikolas Gestrich, Toby Green, Bruce Hall, Jan Jansen, Shamil Jeppie, Daouda Keita, Murray Last, Robin Law, Camille Lefebvre, Paul Lovejoy, Ghislaine Lydon, Carlos Magnavita, Sonja Magnavita, Kevin MacDonald, Thomas McCaskie, Ann McDougall, Daniela Moreau, Mauro Nobili, Insa Nolte, Abel-Wedoud Ould-Cheikh, Benedetta Rossi, Charles Stewart.