Dorugu and Abbega occupy an unusual place in the history of nineteenth-century African exploration. Both were young Africans who had experienced slavery before entering the service of German explorer Adolf Overweg. After Overweg’s death in 1852, they travelled with Heinrich Barth across large parts of the central and western Sudan, including Hausaland, Sokoto and Timbuktu, before crossing the Sahara and reaching Europe in 1855.
Their lives complicate the familiar nineteenth-century image of the solitary European explorer travelling through an unknown continent. Expeditions such as Barth’s depended heavily on African caravan workers, guides, interpreters, political intermediaries, merchants and informants. Dorugu and Abbega were part of this wider network, but their significance went further because parts of their own experiences eventually entered the written historical record.
Dorugu, in particular, left an autobiographical narrative that remains one of the most remarkable accounts of an African traveller observing both nineteenth-century Africa and Europe.
Dorugu’s Childhood and Enslavement
Dorugu was born around 1839 or 1840 at Dambanas, near Kantché, in the region of present-day Niger associated with Damagaram and its capital, Zinder.
His childhood unfolded in an environment affected by warfare, slave raiding and political insecurity. His later autobiographical account described the disruption of communities, his separation from his family and his passage through the hands of different owners.
By 1851, Dorugu had reached Kukawa, the capital of Borno and one of the major political and commercial centres around Lake Chad.
There he encountered Adolf Overweg, a German geologist and astronomer who was participating in the British-sponsored expedition into Central Africa alongside Heinrich Barth and, initially, James Richardson.
Dorugu was first engaged as a camel boy for one of Overweg’s journeys. After returning from that expedition, he went back to his owner and was subsequently sold to another man. Overweg later arranged for Dorugu to be purchased for fifteen silver dollars, identified in later scholarship as Maria Theresa thalers, an important currency in trans-Saharan trade.
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Dorugu was then declared free. A written document confirming his emancipation was prepared for him.
Abbega was a Margi youth from the Mandara and Borno region of what is now north-eastern Nigeria. He too had experienced slavery before becoming associated with Overweg and gaining his freedom.
Dorugu and Abbega Enter Heinrich Barth’s Service
Adolf Overweg’s health deteriorated severely during his travels around Lake Chad. He died at Maduari, near Kukawa, on 27 September 1852, following a prolonged fever.
His death left Heinrich Barth as the principal surviving European member of the expedition.
Dorugu and Abbega subsequently entered Barth’s service as free men. They became members of a demanding expedition in which survival required knowledge of languages, local customs, routes, political relationships and everyday life.
Barth himself possessed considerable linguistic ability and made sustained efforts to learn African languages. He also collected oral traditions, vocabularies, manuscripts and accounts of political history. African companions such as Dorugu and Abbega formed part of the human network that enabled the expedition to move through different regions and societies.
Dorugu and Abbega on the Road to Timbuktu
Barth’s western journey carried his party through some of the most important political and commercial centres of nineteenth-century West Africa.
From the Lake Chad region, the expedition travelled westwards through Zinder and Hausaland, then towards Sokoto and the Niger basin.
On 7 September 1853, Barth reached Timbuktu.
Dorugu and Abbega had already travelled extensively with him before the expedition entered the celebrated Saharan trading and scholarly city.
Barth remained in and around Timbuktu for several months, operating in a politically delicate environment before beginning the return journey in 1854.
The party retraced its route eastwards through territories connected with the Niger, Sokoto and Kano. Barth met the newly arrived German explorer Eduard Vogel on 29 November 1854 and returned to Kukawa on 11 December 1854.
Dorugu and Abbega had now crossed enormous distances with him.
Their journey, however, was not over.
Crossing the Sahara to Europe in 1855
On 4 May 1855, Barth left Kukawa and began the long journey northwards towards the Mediterranean.
Dorugu and Abbega accompanied him across the Sahara.
The caravan eventually reached Tripoli in August 1855. From the Mediterranean coast, the travellers continued towards Europe.
By September, Barth had returned to Britain after an African journey lasting nearly six years. Dorugu and Abbega also reached Europe in 1855.
Their European travels took them through Britain and Germany, including London, Hamburg and Berlin. For the two young Africans, Europe presented a radically different social and physical environment. Dorugu later described unfamiliar customs, buildings, transport, meals and social behaviour from the perspective of someone encountering European life for the first time.
That reversal of perspective is one reason his account remains historically significant. Much nineteenth-century travel writing consisted of Europeans describing Africans. Dorugu’s testimony allowed an African traveller to become an observer of Europe.
Dorugu and Abbega in Heinrich Barth’s Work
Barth’s great achievement after returning from Africa was the publication of Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, based upon his expedition between 1849 and 1855.
The principal English edition appeared in five volumes between 1857 and 1858. It contained extensive material on geography, political history, trade, agriculture, languages, religion, settlements, oral traditions and the economies of communities across the Sahara, Borno, Hausaland, Adamawa, Sokoto and the Niger region.
Dorugu and Abbega contributed linguistic and cultural knowledge during the expedition. Dorugu was a native Hausa speaker, while Abbega was Margi and also possessed considerable knowledge of Hausa and other regional languages.
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Their contribution formed part of the wider African network on which long-distance exploration depended. Barth accumulated information over years of travel from African rulers, scholars, interpreters, merchants, caravan leaders and other informants.
Barth later extended his linguistic research in Collection of Vocabularies of Central-African Languages, published in three parts at Gotha between 1862 and 1866. The work covered Kanuri, Teda, Hausa, Fulfulde, Songhay, Logone, Wandala, Bagirmi and Maba.
James Frederick Schön and the Hausa Legacy
The most enduring literary contribution associated with Dorugu developed through the missionary and linguist James Frederick Schön.
Schön had spent years studying African languages and developed a particular interest in Hausa. The arrival in Britain of Dorugu and Abbega gave him the opportunity to work closely with speakers who had grown up in West and Central Africa.
Both men assisted Schön, although their linguistic backgrounds differed. Abbega was a native Margi speaker who had acquired Hausa and several other languages. Dorugu spoke Hausa as his native language.
Schön worked especially closely with Dorugu, recording his vocabulary, stories, observations and memories.
His Grammar of the Hausa Language, published in London in 1862, incorporated material produced through this collaboration and included part of Dorugu’s autobiographical narrative.
Dorugu subsequently supplied a much larger body of Hausa material.
In 1885, Schön published Magána Hausa: Native Literature, or Proverbs, Tales, Fables and Historical Fragments in the Hausa Language. The volume contained Dorugu’s autobiographical narrative alongside numerous Hausa tales, descriptions, proverbs and other texts. Abbega and other informants also contributed material to Schön’s linguistic and literary work.
An English translation of Magána Hausa followed in 1886.
Dorugu’s importance therefore extended well beyond his years as an expedition attendant. His spoken words became part of one of the earliest substantial printed bodies of Hausa prose and remain valuable to historians, linguists and scholars of African literature.
Two African Lives After Europe
The European journey did not permanently separate either man from Africa.
Abbega returned to West Africa towards the end of 1857 and became associated with the Church Missionary Society and missionary work connected with Samuel Ajayi Crowther. He later settled around Lokoja, at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers, where his knowledge of African and European languages made him useful as an interpreter in dealings involving missionaries, officials, traders and African rulers.
Dorugu remained in Europe considerably longer.
He continued working with Schön and developed his knowledge of English before eventually returning to Africa in 1864. He later worked as an interpreter and intermediary in northern Nigeria.
Their later careers illustrate how dramatically their lives had changed. Two young Africans who entered European expeditionary circles after experiencing slavery became multilingual travellers whose experiences connected Borno, Hausaland, the Niger region, the Sahara, Britain and Germany.
Conclusion
The history of Dorugu and Abbega deserves a place beside the better-known story of Heinrich Barth.
Their lives began in different communities, but slavery drew both into the violent commercial and political networks of nineteenth-century Central and West Africa. Adolf Overweg helped bring them into freedom, and after his death they entered Barth’s service.
They travelled through Hausaland and Sokoto to Timbuktu, returned across the central Sudan, crossed the Sahara and reached Europe in 1855.
Their knowledge assisted Barth’s expedition, but their importance extends beyond their association with the German explorer. Through James Frederick Schön’s linguistic work, especially Dorugu’s autobiography and Hausa narratives, African voices entered an important body of nineteenth-century literature.
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Barth remains one of the most significant European chroniclers of nineteenth-century West Africa. Yet the fuller history of his expedition also requires attention to the Africans who travelled, interpreted, negotiated, remembered and spoke alongside him.
Dorugu and Abbega were among the most remarkable of them.
Author’s Note
The story of Dorugu and Abbega reveals how much nineteenth-century exploration depended upon people whose names were often overshadowed by those of European travellers. Their journeys from enslavement to freedom, from the Lake Chad region to Timbuktu and Europe, and eventually into linguistic, missionary and interpretive work demonstrate that African intermediaries were active participants in the circulation of knowledge between Africa and Europe. Remembering their experiences gives us a fuller understanding of Heinrich Barth’s expedition while restoring Dorugu and Abbega to their place as travellers and historical actors in their own right.
References
Barth, Heinrich. Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa: Being a Journal of an Expedition Undertaken under the Auspices of H.B.M.’s Government, in the Years 1849–1855. 5 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1857–1858.
Schön, James Frederick. Grammar of the Hausa Language. London: Church Missionary House, 1862.
Schön, James Frederick. Magána Hausa: Native Literature, or Proverbs, Tales, Fables and Historical Fragments in the Hausa Language. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1885.
Kirk-Greene, A. H. M., and Paul Newman, trans. and eds. West African Travels and Adventures: Two Autobiographical Narratives from Northern Nigeria. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971.
Winckler, Julia. “Regards croisés: James Henry Dorugu’s Nineteenth-Century European Travel Account.” Journeys, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2009, pp. 1–30.
Lindgren, Uta. “Overweg, Adolf.” Neue Deutsche Biographie, Vol. 19, 1999.
Barth, Heinrich. Sammlung und Bearbeitung centralafrikanischer Vokabularien / Collection of Vocabularies of Central-African Languages. 3 parts. Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1862–1866.
