Stefan Szolc-Rogoziński, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetStefan Szolc-Rogoziński
Polish explorer
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Kalisz, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland
About Stefan Szolc-Rogoziński
- Stefan Szolc-Rogozinski (born 14 April 1861 - 1 December 1896) was a Polish explorer of Africa.
- He was planning to create a Polish colony in Cameroon.Rogozinski was born in Kalisz, Russian partition of Poland.
- After a career in the Imperial Russian Navy, he organized an expedition to Africa with Klemens Tomczek and Leopold Janikowski.
- His Cameroon expedition lasted from 1882 to 1884.
- During British and German competition to make treaties with African rulers in Cameroon, Rogozinski was commissioned by the British government to act as an agent in the interior.
- He had accepted in part because relations between him and local Baptist missionaries had broken down over his decision to sell alcohol to the natives.
- The missionaries had given him the nickname 'Rogue Gin and Whiskey'.
- The Germans press was extremely angry at a Russian citizen being employed by the British to frustrate their ambitions in Cameroon, and Rogozinski's hatred of Germany was well known.
- Chancellor Bismarck even made specific reference to the explorer in the Reichstag while listing his grievances at British policy in West Africa.
- German anger and diplomatic pressures caused by the lead up to the Berlin Conference in 1885 led to the British dismissing Rogozinski from their service.
- They refused to use the many treaties he had negotiated to press claims in what had by now become recognised as German Kamerun.
- After his return, in 1895, he joined the Royal Geographical Society.
- In 1892-1893 he organized an expedition to Egypt. He founded the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw (Panstwowe Muzeum Etnograficzne w Warszawie) and donated his collection of items and artifacts to the museum. He died in 1896 in a traffic accident in Paris.
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