This book begins with a Prologue which describes a British soldier named William Richard Hamilton arriving at the gates of Alexandria in the wake of Lord Nelson’s defeat of Napoleon. Hamilton is by no means a major character in the book or even a supporting character for that matter. In fact, he won’t even make it beyond the Prologue, but the little short story about him making up that section previews most of the greater themes the book will proceed to pursue.
It is one of the great ironies of the modern world that many of the greatest archaeological treasures extricated from beneath the sands of ancient Egypt are stored in the British Museum. The Prologue fashions a thematic introduction out of the date it begins: 1801, quite literally the first year of the 19th century. Chapter One begins with a thrilling portrait right out of a spy novel of an explore Richard Burton sitting in a room in Egypt in 1854 disguised as a man claiming to be Shaykh Abdullah. Burton is more intensely aware that if all the preparations he has put into this disguise—preparation that would put the likes of Robert DeNiro and Daniel Day-Lewis to absolute shame—were seen through he would never walk out that room again. In the years between Hamilton arriving in Alexandria and Burton masquerading as a Muslim, the British Empire had grown into the entity on which it was rightly said “the sun never sets.” Colonization and imperialism had made England not just a mighty military and political power, but also the most socially dominant force on earth. Much of the world which existed beyond the boundaries of an absurdly small island in the North Pacific had come to be viewed by almost all Britons as little more than opportunities to become rich and, if possible, famous.
River of the Gods does not gain cache from revealing one of those glorious little secret histories; it is a story that is very well known in large part because it was originally told by the participants. Since then, the story has been revisited and retold through literature, stage and film. England’s Royal Geographical Society had grown to great power over the course of the first half of the 1800’s, becoming a powerful instrument of imperialism ambitions that lay outside the realm of war and politics. The goal was to increase the dominance of England as the premier influencer of society around the world in part by making the country the center of world history. William Richard Hamilton was in Egypt in 1801 for the specific purpose of locating one of the genuine Holy Grails of history: the Rosetta Stone. Half a century later, the Royal Geographic Center would be sending Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke to Africa on the mission of locating the source of the Nile river, an undertaking which had so far managed to befuddle countless others for millennia.
The bulk of the story charts their progress or lack thereof while becoming a fascinating tale of the lengths that England would go to dominate the planet and that men would go to in order to attain fabulous wealth and everlasting fame. Although working in tandem, it is not exactly a partnership. Burton had already earned a reputation not inaccurately viewed as a combination of James Bond and Indiana Jones. Speke was his opposite in every major way except one: ambition. Both men equally desired the fame that they knew would come with being able to stake the claim of having been the person who solved one of the great mysteries of history.
As they make their way into Africa they are presented with a dazzling array of dangers ranging from the natural like disease to deadly assaults by natives who did not share their views of racial superiority. (Although Burton on this score must be accounted somewhat more progressive than the profoundly racist Speke.) Both men are suffer temporary but terrifying bouts of blindness. Burton will eventually be forced out of action for a year as the result of paralysis brought on by near-fatal case of malaria. Indeed, Burton is more often the recipient of the fuzzy end of the lollipop: during an attack by natives far outnumbering them, a javelin gets lodged in his face with one end sticking out one cheek and the other end sticking out the other. Although, it must be admitted, Speke’s experiences were hardly a walk in the park: he would be stabbed nearly a dozen times during the same assault. These setbacks will prove consequential.
With Burton out of the picture and Speke still physically able to continue, he manages to come across a fantastical body of water which, being the good little Victorian soldier boy he was, he immediately names it Lake Victoria. Almost as quickly (not in chronological terms, but metaphorically), he rushes back to England to receive his due credit as the European hero who discovered, at long last, the source of the Nile.
Except that while Burton may not have been at the peak of his considerable form, he was still very much alive. And he quite simply was not so quick to buy into Speke’s amazing story. In fact, he publicly questioned Speke’s veracity about the entire enterprise, an action which not that very long before would have been more than enough to legitimize a duel with pistols. Speke responded not with pistols, but with a ship. A ship carrying him back to Africa with the intention of proving his claims once and for all. Meanwhile, Burton carried on a public relations campaign designed to expose the man who had now openly become not just his enemy but his nemesis. And, as these things often play out, it was the guy with the greater charisma who won the hearts and minds of the public. Public and private opinions toward Speke began to side more and more with Burton to the point of finally be pushed to take part in a public debate with Burton. And who won this highly anticipated clash of the British titans? The world will never know. As Burton was waiting in the lecture hall for his opponent to show up, the news was delivered that Speke’s delay was the result of his being found dead with a bullet still inside, fatally close to his heart.
In most of the previous versions of this story, here is where it ends. Two heroic British explorers debating over a discovery with one dead at his own hand and the other having to deal with the fact that he was in some way the cause of that suicide. But as in history, this book reveals that this story is not the two-man tragedy it appears. For there was a third participant in their forays into Africa in search of the source without whom, both would probably have died long before, alone and never to be seen again. While the story told in this book is not new, some of the details may be even to those already familiar. Set against the backdrop of the romance of empire-building which both Speke and Burton were part and parcel of is the lesser-known tale of their guide, Sidi Mubarak Bombay. Bombay’s story could not possibly be awkwardly juxtaposed against that of the two British heroes. He was captured in his homeland of East Africa and sold as a slave to a man who sent him to India. It was only in the aftermath of the death of his “owner” that Sudi was finally able to find freedom and make his way back home. His experiences in India has taught him much the British explorers would find useful, including the ability to communicate not just through language translation, but in knowing the ways and means of these representatives of the Victorian Age and the British Empire.
With Bombay as the reference point of contact between both Speke and Burton, the book explores the ways in which racist philosophies were not just instrumental, but integral to expanding the empire. What little fame Bombay has enjoyed in the western world, ironically, did not come from his essential field guide work for Speke and Burton, but rather by leading the caravan which ended with the four most famous words in the history of British exploration of Africa: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
