Stefan Szolc-Rogoziński


Stefan Szolc-Rogoziński was a Polish explorer of Africa. He was planning to create a Polish colony in Cameroon.
Rogoziński 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, Rogoziński 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 Rogoziński'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 Rogoziński 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 and donated his collection of items and artifacts to the museum.
He died in 1896 in a traffic accident in Paris.