in the eastern coast of Africa and its hinterland had been growing in the 1850s. David Livingston had caught the public attention with his accounts of his explorations and his reminder that a slave trade on the east coast was still taking a great many slaves across the Indian Ocean to the Arab world. When he said that he was going back to Africa to make an open road for commerce and for Christianity he meant that unless a natural alternative was provided the slave trade was bound to go on (Lloyd, p. 182).Livingston was an icon to remind the British of Africa but his role alone did not fully set the foundation for later British growth in Africa. African expansion hadnt particularly been considered by because it wasnt viable do to high mortality rates caused by malaria and other tropical diseases and the lack of geographic knowledge of the African hinterland. These piece of the foundation started to come together though in the 1850s and 1860s to combined with Livingstons publicizing of Africa to build the base that would support the rapid expansion the would develop in the 1880s and 1890s. Lloyd also discusses the importance of medical and geographic advance with the following,Other explorers were putting together pieces of the map of east Africa, though at the time of Livingstons death in 1873 the intricacies of the system of lakes and rivers had still not been worked out, and any politicians rash enough to think of taking an interest in the African interior would have found it hard to know where they were going. Advances inland were becoming a little more practicable because of advances in technology; People had known for centuries that quinine was a useful drug for tropical diseases, but it was really not until an expedition up the river Niger in 1854 succeeded in keeping its death rate very low by laying down that everybody must take a regular dose of quinine that the drugs value comprehensive value for preventative purposes was...
