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David Livingstone The Scottish missionary and medic believed that slavery could better be eradicated by trade than by force.

In two parts

1840-1873
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Music: Malcolm Arnold

© Wellcome Trust, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 4.0. Source

About this picture …

David Livingstone (1813-1873), Scottish medic and African missionary explorer. Unlike many others, who stormed their way through Africa like army units (and were often mistaken for slaving parties) or made themselves objectionable by unjustified persistence, Livingstone befriended tribesmen and did not force his beliefs on them.

David Livingstone

Part 1 of 2

By the 1840s Britain had so repented of her involvement in slavery that she was the leading force in worldwide abolition. One of the most beloved anti-slavery campaigners was Scottish missionary, Dr David Livingstone.

IT was at a public meeting, on 1st June, 1840, that with the words ‘Christianity, commerce, civilisation’ Sir Thomas Buxton, an anti-slavery campaigner, awoke medical student David Livingstone to his lifelong calling: to destroy the slave trade by persuading Africa to trade in farm and factory goods rather than people.

That December, now working for the London Missionary Society, Livingstone left for Bechuanaland in Africa.

However, the LMS’s community in Kuruman was too small and unambitious for Livingstone: he preferred to travel through the continent’s vast interior accompanied by a small, lightly-armed team, so as not to appear threatening.

It was typical of his respect for the dignity and worth of ordinary Africans that he learnt their languages, and offered advice on medicine and irrigation.

All the while, however, he was mapping potential ‘highways’ such as the Zambesi, and cataloguing natural resources that might provide a profitable alternative to selling slaves to the Arabs, and the Portuguese in Mozambique.

Jump to Part 2

Précis

David Livingstone was a Scottish doctor and missionary who explored the heart of Africa hoping to combat the slave-trade - still flourishing despite British efforts to end it - by helping Africans to engage in legitimate commerce instead. To that end, he travelled across the continent mapping possible transport routes and natural resources while giving practical help to farming communities. (60 / 60 words)

Part Two

© Thomas Nugent, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0. Source

About this picture …

This bronze sculpture in David Livingstone’s birthplace, Blantyre (some eight miles southeast of Glasgow), shows the heart-stopping moment on 16th February, 1844, when he tried to stop a lion from devouring livestock from pens worryingly close to the village. A Christian convert named Mebalwe, whom Livingstone employed as a teacher, came to his aid, and eventually the lion was shot. See Mauled by a Lion.

IN 1845, Livingstone married Mary Moffat, but he was reluctant to expose her or their four children to the dangers of an explorer’s life: he had narrowly escaped being killed by a lion only the year before.

Sadly, his anxiety was justified: Mary died of malaria on a visit to Africa in 1862.

In the meantime, however, Livingstone had crossed the entire continent, and on November 16th 1855 he became the first European to see the Victoria Falls, writing in his bestselling travelogue that “Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight”.

Two years after Mary’s death, he crossed the Indian Ocean to Bombay in a tiny river-boat, just to avoid having to sell it to Portuguese slavers.

On his return, he began searching for the source of the Nile south of Lake Tanganyika, but his health was failing. On 1st May, 1873, his companions found him dead in his room in Hala in northern Rhodesia. He had been praying.

Copy Book

Précis

Livingstone became famous in his own lifetime through his travelogue, in which he described the moment when he became the first European to see the Victoria Falls in modern Zimbabwe. After his wife Mary died in 1862, Livingstone continued his explorations but within a few years his health failed him, and he died in 1873. (53 / 60 words)

Related Video

A short video from BBC Earth, showing the vastness of the Victoria Falls in what is now Zimbabwe, which Livingstone was privileged to see, the first European to do so, on 16th November 1855. Named locally ‘the smoke that thunders’ (Mosi-oa-Tunya), it is one of the few places that Livingstone named with English words. Both names seem to me to be equally fitting.

Suggested Music

1 2

Four Scottish Dances

1: Pesante

Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006)

Performed by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrew Penny.

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Four Scottish Dances

3: Allegretto

Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006)

Performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the composer.

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