Safari Holidays: Brief History Safari has it roots in Arabic via Swahili and means “to make a journey”. Originally, Safaris were essentially trade missions seeking ivory, rhino horn, and slaves. With the coming of Europeans, the Safari began to be associated with exploration and the discovery. And those early European Safaris were huge operations that involved armies of staff and crew along with supplies and weapons. They blazed a trail for scientific safaris by Stanley and Livingstone or Burton and Speke. Many explorers never returned alive. Disease, starvation or death was part of the early African Safari experience.
African Safaris were trendy too. The novels of Rider Haggard, such as King Solomon’s Mines, introduced Allan Quatermain and the African Safari to an entirely new Victorian audience. Inevitably, along with great naturalists and men of science came the hunters. The European colonial ethic was to rule and dominate the people, the mineral resources and the wildlife. The Safari became synonymous with the “Hunt”. Conquering the wild beast and returning with trophies became the Safari’s entire purpose. Great White Hunters like Cornwallis Harris and Frederick Courtenay Selous prospered and by 1850 they were killing 30,000 elephant a year in East Africa. Gradually, this attitude changed. Those same hunters realised that the wildlife they were slaughtering was a finite resource. The first seeds of a conservation ethic were planted.
The Safari gradually began to change as the hunters began to consider themselves as naturalists and experts in bush craft. Selous’ book “A Hunter’s Wanderings In Africa” encouraged a new respect for natural Africa. Ironic though it may be, it’s because of men like Seleous and Harris that the conservation movement got started. That didn’t immediately stop the shooting parties though.
East Africa became the home of the Safari in the early 20th century and an entire industry grew up to cater for the every need of American and European clients keen to bag a trophy. The Guided Safari was born and probably reached its peak in 1909 with Theodore Roosevelt’s Great Safari, which cost £15,000.00 (several millions in today’s value!). Every Safari, whether undertaken by a hunter, naturalist, explorer, conqueror or colonial administrator, needed an army of gun-bearers, interpreters, guides, cooks and porters. Some of the Africans who made Safaris possible were almost as well known to the European public as the white explorers themselves.
By the middle of the last century portered safaris became less common as automobiles took over. Camping Safaris grew in popularity and so too did Photographic Safaris. The Safari Holiday has come a long way from the days of slave trading and over-zealous hunting. However, some elements of the Safari Holiday remain the same : Africa’s staggering natural beauty, the sense of freedom and adventure and the crucial involvement of Africa’s people. A Safari Holiday also remains a highly personal experience.
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