Sir Harry Johnston was known throughout Europe as an explorer, naturalist, painter, and author. He traveled extensively to gather geographic information and botanical samples as well as to record the languages and customs of native peoples. He is best remembered for his imperialistic British interests and for his ethnocentric attempts to make sense of the complex African continent.

Henry "Harry" Hamilton Johnston, the eldest of twelve children, was born in South London on 12 June 1858 to Esther and John Johnston. John Johnston, who also had two children from a previous marriage, was a wealthy director of a London insurance company, and his work often took him throughout western Europe and Scandinavia and occasionally to remote parts of Russia and South Africa. He studied the writings of the early African explorers and held a particular enthusiasm for the work of Dr. David Livingstone, a passion that his son Harry later...