From approximately 1860, the Western world became witness to an explosive growth in ethnographic data coming from all parts of the world. Known as the ‘dark continent’ on account of its unexplored regions, Africa presented an enticing challenge to European explorers attempting to gather information on peoples that had never before come into contact with European culture. Certain African regions were a treasure trove of scholarly material. Europeans were thirsting for information about the mysterious river named the White Nile, its effluents, its fauna, its flora, its geography and its people. Collecting ethnographic specimens in southern Sudan formed part of this quest to expand the West's scientific knowledge. Those who helped to fill this gap in Europeans’ knowledge included naturalists such as Heuglin (a zoologist with ornithology as a specialty) and amateurs like the Tinnes who collected floral specimens on their ‘pleasure trip’.

For the most part, these scientific endeavours were motivated by scholarly curiosity. In the following paragraphs, Heuglin's accounts and notations will be put in the context of the development of geographical and ethnological science in Germany. Particularly in view of the period in which Heuglin performed his fieldwork, these discoveries have to be regarded as unconnected to any colonial intentions.

The ethnographic collections

In the months following Alexine's death in the Libyan desert, John Tinne sent his son Fred to Cairo to retrieve the belongings she had left behind. His two other sons Theodore and Ernest went to Tripoli to see that the authorities carried out the necessary investigations concerning Alexine's death and to deal with her properties there. When John visited Alexine in January and February 1865, he had shipped 65 ethnographic specimens collected by her out of Cairo. The following year he donated these items to the Free Public Museum in Liverpool. This collection consisted mostly of what she had acquired during her Bahr el-Ghazal trip, together with some objects gathered on her tour in 1862 on the White Nile. In 1869, several objects that Alexine had assembled on her later Sahara journey, possibly from the area of the Tuaregs, were transferred from her home in Tripoli to Liverpool and donated subsequently to the same museum.