Why was it important to discover the source of the Nile?

Question

Isn't it true that the Nile will keep flowing regardless of whether we know the source? What did people hope to gain when they found the source of the Nile? Did they gain this thing, whatever it was?

Answer 1

The great romance of the quest was certainly a prime motivation, and among the principal reasons so many embarked upon the quest. But that fails to answer the more basic question - why was exploration of this nature viewed as valuable or gallant at all?

There were two primary reasons why, since early antiquity, explorers had sought the source of the Nile. The first of these was eminently practical. Egyptian agriculture depended upon the regular floods of the river. When these were unexpectedly large, the damage could be extensive; when the floodwaters ran shallow or failed altogether, the results could be catastrophic. The ability to forecast the floodwaters, and to understand why they sometimes swelled and why they occasionally failed, was thus of some considerable importance.

But there was also a second level of interest in the problem. Geography was not, in the nineteenth century, an abstract discipline. Mapping land (and water), tracing navigable rivers, and crossing mountain ranges and deserts, yielded the information necessary to control, exploit, and profit from hitherto little-known areas. It was, in other words, a central element of the imperial project. Expeditions to follow the Nile to its sources plunged into one of the last corners of the earth unexplored by those of European descent, and the information that they gathered proved essential to the future exploitation of the region.

Answer 2

for the same reason people want to be first to the suth or north poles, to be the first to do it. It was anly a matter of time before it happened so the explorers all wanted to be the first.  they gained status as an explorer and probably an income from lecturer tours.