European exploration of Africa 1840s, so that around the midpoint of the 19th century and the beginning of the colonial Scramble for Africa, the unexplored parts were now limited to what would turn out to be the Congo Basin and the African Great Lakes. This "Heart of Africa" remained one of the last remaining "blank spots" on world maps of the later 19th century (alongside the Arctic, Antarctic and the interior of the Amazon basin). It was left for 19th-century European explorers, including those searching for the famed sources of the Nile, notably John Hanning Speke, Sir Richard Burton, David Livingstone and Henry Morton
British and Creole intervention in the Sierra Leone hinterland in the 19th century British and Creole intervention in the Sierra Leone hinterland in the 19th century Sierra Leone assumed its present large geographical size only in 1896. Prior to that, it was only a small colony encompassing roughly the 30-km-long peninsula on which Freetown is located. Initially, the British and Creoles (freed slaves and their descendents) of the Freetown colony had only a very limited involvement in the affairs of the African kingdoms around them; such as it was, it consisted mostly of trading and missionary activity. Over the course of the 19th century this involvement gradually increased. The colonial government was, in