| Search Antiqbook |
Ask a question or
Order this book
Browse our books
Search our books
Book dealer info
BAKER, SIR SAMUEL W. PASHA.: ISMAILIA: A NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION TO CENTRAL AFRICA FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE SLAVE TRADE. Organised by Ismail, Khedive of Egypt.
New York, 1875. First American edition, Harper & Brothers, 1875. thick 8vo, 240 x 150 mm, 9½ x 5¾ inches, 51 engraved plates including frontispiece portrait, 2 coloured maps, 1 folding, 542 pages including index, in original publisher's cloth, bevelled edges, gilt illustration of camel train to upper cover, gilt vignette and lettering to spine, brown endpapers. Slightest rubbing to extremities, 2 tiny ink marks to lower cover, very slight very pale foxing to margins of prelims and of pages facing folding map, otherwise contents clean and bright, 2 small closed tears to inner edge of folding map. A very good tight copy. Sir Samuel White Baker (1821 - 1893) had already spent some years exploring Africa when in 1869 at the request of the khedive Ismail, Baker undertook the command of a military expedition to the equatorial regions of the Nile, with the object of suppressing the slave-trade there and opening the way to commerce and civilization. He started from Cairo with a force of about 1700 Egyptians troops and was given the rank of pasha and major-general in the Ottoman army. The khedive appointed him Governor-General of the new territory of Equatoria for four years at a salary of £10,000 a year; and it was not until the expiration of that time that Baker returned to Cairo, leaving his work to be carried on by the new governor. He ewas faced in his task by with innumerable difficulties - the blocking of the river in the Sudd, the bitter hostility of officials interested in the slave-trade, the armed opposition of the natives - but he succeeded in planting in the new territory the foundations upon which others could build up an administration. Images sent on request.
Offered for GBP 395.00 = appr. US$ 646.22 by: Roger Middleton - Book number: 4912