EuropaWorld 16/2/2001 Sir Richard Francis Burton

The life of Richard Francis Burton is one that frustrates simple definition. Explorer, adventurer, investigator and reporter his life was characterized by excitement, unpredictability and danger.

Richard Francis Burton was born in England in 1821, the son of an army colonel. Accompanying his parents on their frequent travels abroad, the young Richard gained both a taste for travel and a linguistic ability that stayed with him for the rest of his life. Having been expelled from Oxford university for attending horse-racing (not the first of the many social misdemeanors Burton was to make in his life) he joined the army of the East India Company aged 21. His first posting took him to Sindh, India. Excelling at languages, and with a penchant for disguise, adventure and reconnaissance, he made a first class intelligence officer- penetrating souks and bazaars to bring back information for his commander Sir Charles Napier. His promising career ended however, after an assignment to investigate homosexual brothels. His report revealed the extent to which such brothels were frequented by British officers and, after Napier's departure from India, Burton's embarassing report was hushed up and his own departure encouraged. Sick with both disillusion and cholera, he left India at age 29.

He spent the next 3 years recuperating in France where he wrote four books on his experiences of the culture of India. He also finished planning a long-held dream of an expedition to the sacred city of Mecca - hitherto forbidden to non-Muslims. Disguising himself as an Afghanistani Muslim, he went to Cairo, Suez, and Medina in 1853 before entering Mecca to sketch and record the Holy Shrine of Ka'bah. As a non-believer he would have faced mandatory execution had he been discovered. He recorded the expedition in Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Mecca, combining his own adventure narrative with a deep insight into Muslim culture.

The following year Burton undertook a similar expedition to the equally forbidden East African city of Harer in Somalia, becoming the first European to enter this Muslim citadel and leave alive. Again he recorded the experience - part adventure story, part accomplished anthropological study. Whilst in Africa, he also developed a passion for discovering the source of the river Nile. Subsequent expeditions were undertaken with his partner, John Speke, until this end was achieved, with tribal attacks and bouts of malaria proving testing though not insurmountable obstacles. Whilst it was actually Speke who correctly identified Lake Victoria as the river's source, it is Burton who is credited with discovering Lake Tanganyika in 1858.

After his return from Africa, this intrepid and ever-questioning explorer shifted his attention to a different continent. In 1861 he made a surprise overland trip to Utah, United States to visit the Mormons and their leader. Moralists were appalled both by his visit and his dispassionate reporting of their religious and polygamous habits in his subsequent book The City of the Saints. Shortly after his return he married Isabel Arundell, the daughter of an aristocratic, Catholic family that he had been courting since 1856.

The following year, Richard Burton joined the British Foreign Office, where, over the next 10 years, postings to Africa and the Middle East allowed him to continue his unique style of anthropological investigating and reporting. He by turns intrigued and outraged the Victorian public with his graphic reports of social, sexual and cannibalistic tribal habits. In 1872 he was assigned to Trieste as consul where he continued to write extensively. As well as his own travel narratives he translated Italian, Roman, Persian poetry and composed a volume of his own. He also sought to bring the erotica of the East to Victorian England but his translations, most notably of The Kama Sutra of Vatsayana and Arabian Nights met with mixed reactions.

Despite his tendency to shock and outrage, Burton did receive some recognition for his outstanding contribution to anthropological and geographical knowledge in his later years. During his life he published 43 volumes on his explorations and almost 30 volumes of translations. Queen Victoria awarded him the honor of Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George for his service to England in 1886, just four years before his death.

Sir Richard died in Trieste on October 20, 1890. In a futile attempt to preserve his reputation, his wife immediately burned almost all of his diaries and current manuscripts. It was a monumental loss to anthropologists and scholars alike. The surviving volumes of his work however continue to testify to the talents of this great scholar and adventurer.