Robert Jamieson (died 1861) was a London merchant and promoter of commerce with

West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...

Life

Described also as a

palm oil Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 36% of global oils produced from o ...

merchant of Liverpool, and as of Glasgow, Jamieson sought to open up major African rivers to navigation and commerce. His schooner, the ''Warree'', went to the

River Niger The Niger River ( ; ) is the main river of West Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in south-eastern Guinea near the Sierra Leone border. It runs in a crescent shape through Mali, Nige ...

in 1838. In 1839 he equipped the ''Ethiope'', and its commander, Captain John Beecroft, explored several West African rivers, to higher points in some instances than had then been reached by Europeans. In 1840 Jamieson was offered, but declined, a vice-presidency of the Institut d'Afrique of France. When the Second Melbourne ministry, in 1841, supported the African Colonisation Expedition to the Niger, he denounced the scheme. The attempt was abandoned from September 1841, and on 25 October many of the surviving colonists were rescued by the ''Ethiope''. Jamieson died in London on 5 April 1861.

Works

Narratives of explorations were published by Jamieson and others in the ''Journal of the Royal Geographical Society''. Jamieson opposed the Niger expedition in ''Appeals to the Government and People of Great Britain'', where he claimed the proposed colonisers would be monopolists. He pointed out the fulfilment of his predictions of disaster in ''Sequel to two Appeals'' (London, 1843). In 1859 Jamieson published ''Commerce with Africa'', emphasising the insufficiency of treaties for the suppression of the

African slave trade Slavery has historically been widespread in Africa. Systems of servitude and slavery were once commonplace in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the rest of the ancient and medieval world. When the trans-Saharan slave trade, Red Sea s ...

, and urging the use of the land route from Cross River to the Niger.

Notes

;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Jamieson, Robert Year of birth missing 1861 deaths British merchants