By the later eighteenth century, Europeans were looking at Africa with new expectations and hopes. Malachy Postlethwayt, citing Leo Africanus, claimed that the continent and its peoples could produce not merely precious metals but ‘all the richest articles of the East and West India commerce’; ‘if once a turn for industry and the arts was introduced among them, a greater quantity of the European produce and manufactures might be exported thither than to any other country in the whole world’. Merchants and manufacturers seeking new markets, statesmen whose colonial systems had been damaged in war, dreamed similar dreams; and, in this period, some took tentative steps to discover what substance might lie behind them.

The primary need, if speculations based on Leo Africanus were to give way to credit-worthy enterprises, was for precise geographical knowledge. The aspiration to extend trade powerfully reinforced the interest which students of the developing natural sciences showed in Africa, as in other unexplored regions. Inspired by Linnaeus, many Swedish botanists made modest journeys into unfamiliar country, noting, like Sparrmann at the Cape, what economic potentialities the land seemed to hold, together with much miscellaneous sociological detail. Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society and sponsor of botanical studies at Kew, also encouraged botanical collectors in Africa; among his correspondents was James Bruce, whose observations during his journeys in Abyssinia (1768–73) were inspired by a widely ranging scientific curiosity.