Alexandre de Serpa Pinto
The name Serpa Pinto is probably only familiar to hard-core Africa enthusiasts, which is a shame, because he truly was one of the great African explorers.
The Portuguese were the oldest African colonizers by far. Their first colonies were founded in the 15th century, hundreds of years before the other major European powers began to develop their interests.
What is interesting about Portuguese exploration in Africa is the fact that much of it was undertaken in pursuit of the Slave Trade, and often by the illiterate scrapings of Lisbon’s prisons, with the result that few written records were kept. The result also was that many of the great feats of exploration recorded by the European explorers of the 19th century had already been done many times by the Portuguese, without any accolades. Another interesting fact is that much of the work done by Portuguese explorers was done by half-caste or ‘mulatto’ foot soldiers, whom later explorers refused to acknowledge because they were not white.
Serpa Pinto was the exception to this rule. He was a military officer, of good breeding and entirely literate. He arrived in East Africa in 1869, deployed to the colonies as a twenty-three-year-old junior officer to suppress native rebellions along the Zambezi River. This he did, but at the same time, he found himself fascinated with this great river that stretched away into the interior, almost unknown to European explorers. His exploration of the lower Zambezi was in fact just a recapitulation of what Portuguese slave traders already knew, but it was an entry into the field of exploration, and his later efforts would be far more dramatic.
In 1877, Serpa Pinto was one of the first to plot the headwaters of the Congo and Zambezi Rivers, marking the eastern extremities of the expanding Portuguese territory of Angola. Other than confirming the major hydrography of the region, what is remarkable about this expedition was its simplicity, and bearing in mind the challenges of terrain, its lack of disaster. Usually it was mishap and adventure that made for interesting reading in the popular press of the time, and this is perhaps why it received so little attention.
Far more high profile was his exploration of what would today be southern Angola, eastern Zambia and northern Zimbabwe, a long and formal expedition that kept exhaustive records, carried along with it numerous experts, and placed on the map of Africa vast regions hitherto unknown. Serpa Pinto arrived at Pretoria, in northern South Africa, on February 12, 1879.
Perhaps more amazing than the journey itself is the fact that the British were sufficiently impressed to award Serpa Pinto the Royal Geographic Society Founders Gold Medal, which was the first official British imperial acknowledgement of Portuguese achievement in exploration. In 1881, Serpa Pinto published his opus magnus, Como eu atravessei a África, or How I crossed Africa, which, although hardly one of the great epics of African exploration, certainly placed him in the pantheon.