Recent historical debates about the extent to which British people knew or cared about the empire to some extent miss the point. The public might not have regarded Africa as the key to national wealth and security, or as a project that affected their day-to-day lives in material or measurable ways, but they were often fascinated by its sheer drama and exoticism. It was the people of Africa rather than the land, rivers or mountains that gripped the imagination most tightly in the late nineteenth century.
