Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

David Livingstone, a Scottish physician and Christian missionary, gained fame as an explorer in the Victorian era. Livingstone believed that discovering the source of the Nile River would give him the influence to end the slave trade. His explorations in Africa and eventual death led to the founding of major Christian missionary initiatives in central Africa.

Livingstone was the second of seven children born to Neil Livingstone (1788-1856) and his wife Agnes (née Hunter; 1782-1865). He was born on 9th March 1813 in Blantyre, Scotland, in a tenement building for cotton factory workers. At the age of ten, he began working for the factory, spending 12 hours a day tying broken cotton threads on the spinning machines.

Aside from factory work, Livingstone’s father was a door-to-door tea salesman and Sunday school teacher. His interests in theology, travel, and missionary enterprises inspired the young David, who also enjoyed reading about nature and science. Livingstone’s extensive reading as a child led him to contemplate the relationship between religion and science.

Unsatisfied with the teachings of the Church of Scotland, Livingstone began worshipping at the local Congregational church from the age of 15. He believed that “the Holy Spirit is open to all who ask it”, and eventually persuaded his father that science did not undermine Christianity but advanced it. When Protestant missionary Charles Gutzlaff (1803-51) called for missionaries to train as medical doctors, 21-year-old Livingstone leapt at the opportunity. Due to a lack of family funds, Livingstone had to support himself, studying medicine and chemistry at Anderson’s University while also working as a spinner at the mill. To become a missionary, Livingstone also needed to be able to speak Greek and Latin, so he attended the Congregational Church College and received some tutorage from a Roman Catholic man.

Most missionary groups did not accept Congregationalists, but the London Missionary Society (LMS) was an exception. Livingstone applied in 1837 and began training in Ongar, Essex. Livingstone struggled with theology and language studies, but the Reverend Richard Cecil was determined for Livingstone to succeed. Livingstone received an extra few months of theology lessons before beginning his medical studies at the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. By the end of 1840, Livingstone was both an ordained minister of the church and a Licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

The First Opium War (1839-42) prevented Livingstone from becoming a missionary in China. Instead, he set his focus on Africa. South Africa already had a well-established missionary post, but no one had visited the vast plain to the north. While some expressed reluctance, Fowell Buxton (1786-1845), the future brother-in-law of Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845), argued that extending Christian missions would help to end the slave trade and allow African chiefs to trade legitimately with Europe.

On 17th November 1840, Livingstone set sail on a long journey to Cape of Good Hope in South Africa via Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. While travelling, he studied the Dutch and Tswana languages, two of the spoken tongues in South Africa. The ship eventually docked in Algoa Bay on 19th May 1841, from where Livingstone and two other missionaries travelled by ox cart to the Kuruman Mission, eventually arriving on 31st July.

Livingstone participated in a 750-mile trek between September and December 1841 to search for a new place to set up a missionary station. They settled on Mabotsa in Botswana, close to the border with South Africa. Delighted to call Mabotsa “the centre of the sphere of my labours”, Livingstone helped build the required facilities. Unfortunately, Mabotsa was prone to lion attacks, and Livingstone was needed to help protect the villagers’ sheep. On one occasion, a lion pinned Livingstone to the ground, breaking his arm.

To recuperate, Livingstone returned to Kuruman, where he was nursed by the daughter of a couple of missionaries. Mary Moffat (1821-62) tended to Livingstone’s needs until he could lift heavy weights and fire a gun unaided. During this time, Mary and Livingstone became engaged and married on 9th January 1845.

The mission in Mabotsa proved difficult, and Livingstone soon moved to another location, Chonuane. Unfortunately, Chonuane also had its problems, for instance, droughts. Livingstone wished to go beyond the borders of South Africa and moved to the Kolobeng Mission in Botswana, where he briefly converted the ruler of the Kwêna people to Christianity.

In 1849, Livingstone travelled north of Kolobeng with English explorer William Cotton Oswell (1818-93) from Leytonstone, Essex. Together, they crossed the Kalahari Desert to Lake Ngami, which Livingstone hoped could become a waterway or “highway” to the coast. They did not stop there and continued to the Zambezi River, which they reached in August 1851. The following year, Livingstone sent his wife and children to Britain while he continued travelling across Africa. By May 1854, they reached the city of Luanda, then belonging to the Portuguese, but felt it unsuited for a trade route. Livingstone continued east along the Zambezi, accompanied by 114 Kololo men he met on route. He became the first European to see the Mosi-oa-Tunya (“the smoke that thunders”) waterfall, which he renamed Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria. Eventually, Livingstone reached the Indian Ocean, thus successfully mapping most of the Zambezi River.

By now, Livingstone had been hailed the first European to cross south-central Africa and “open up” Africa, although there were already a couple of Portuguese trade routes in place. Whilst Livingstone advocated trade, he wished to focus on the abolition of slavery. With a new motto, Christianity, Commerce and Civilization, Livingstone aimed to open up the Zambezi River as a Christian commercial highway into Africa.

In December 1856, Livingstone joined his family in Britain, although he did not stay for long. He later mentioned his one regret in life was not spending enough time with his children. Mary and Livingstone had three sons and three daughters: Robert, Agnes, Thomas, Elizabeth, William Oswell and Anna Mary. All except Elizabeth reached adulthood.

The Royal Geographical Society awarded Livingstone their Patron’s Medal for his explorations in Africa, which he wrote up and published in 1857. Encouraged by the response to his journal, Livingstone proposed more expeditions to improve trade routes and abolish slavery. The London Missionary Society, whilst supporting the spreading of the Gospel, refused to fund anything outside of their aim to convert Africans to Christianity. As a result, Livingstone resigned from the London Missionary Society and was appointed Her Majesty’s Consul. This new position permitted Livingstone to venture into the Eastern Coast of Africa. Public support helped to fund some of Livingstone’s future trips, as did a £5,000 grant from the government to investigate the potential to trade via the Zambezi River.

In March 1858, Livingstone set off on his second Zambezi expedition with six British officers. They reached the Zambezi in May, where they planned to sail along the river. Unfortunately, Livingstone had not explored this section and did not know about the water rapids. The river was also the site of a war between Portugal and a group of slaves. Unable to follow their original plan, the group set their sights on Lake Nyasa. They needed to wait over a year for a suitable boat to be shipped and built for their explorations, during which time Livingstone learned of the death of his wife Mary from malaria. Mary had been volunteering in Mozambique when she contracted the illness.

Eventually, the ship was ready, and Livingstone sailed her along the coast to explore the Ruvuma River, which forms the border between Mozambique and Tanzania. The following year, 1863, they ventured up the Shire River but faced the horrors of famine and war. Frequently, they had to clear the way through corpses floating downstream.

Having been unable to sail on the Zambezi River, the British government ordered the recall of the expedition. The newspapers branded Livingstone as a failure, which made it difficult to raise funds for future attempts. Fortunately, the collections of botanical, ecological, geological, and ethnographic material collected on the trip benefitted scientific institutions.

In January 1868, Livingstone set off on a new expedition to find the source of the River Nile. Previous explorers proposed the location as Lake Albert or Lake Victoria, but Livingstone suspected it was further south. With a crew that included freed slaves, Livingstone set off from the mouth of the Ruvuma River. Several assistants soon lost interest and returned home, falsely claiming Livingstone had died to hide that they had abandoned the ship. By the time Livingstone arrived at Lake Malawi on 6th August, most of his supplies had been used or stolen, and very few of his crew remained. Undeterred, he travelled through swamps to Lake Tanganyika, Lake Mweru and the Lualaba River.

From the Lualaba River, Livingstone trekked through the jungle to Ujiji in Tanzania, where he arrived with pneumonia, cholera and tropical ulcers. He reluctantly accepted the help of slave traders to continue his journey and lived in a roped-off enclosure like an animal for the entertainment of the locals. During his time with the slave traders, Livingstone witnessed the massacre of 400 Africans by Arab slavers, which left him too shattered to continue his mission to find the source of the Nile. Instead, he travelled the 240 miles back to Ujiji, where he arrived violently ill on 23rd October 1871. Despite his failure, his journal and scientific notes later enabled large regions of Africa to be mapped and earned him the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society.

With many people believing he was dead, Livingstone lost contact with the outside world for six years. He sent 44 letters during his time in the wilderness, only one of which reached its destination. In the letter, Livingstone expressed how unwell he was and that he would unlikely be seen again. Fortunately, this was not the case.

Welsh-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) set out to find the lost doctor on behalf of the New York Herald newspaper in 1869. He eventually found him in Ujiji on 10th November 1871, where he allegedly spoke the famous line, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Although pleased to see another white man, the first one in six years, Livingstone did not want to leave Africa until his mission was complete. Despite being often confused due to illness, Livingstone set off once more to find the source of the Nile.

Livingstone never found the source of the Nile. He died on 1st May 1873 at the age of 60 in present-day Zambia due to malaria and dysentery. His only loyal attendants, Chuma and Susi from central Africa, arranged his funeral, which included the burial of his heart under the tree where he died. They carried the remains of his body to Ujiji, from where they arranged his return to Britain for burial. Livingstone’s body was eventually interred in Westminster Abbey.

Despite being a Christian missionary, Livingstone only converted one person, and it is believed they returned to their tribal ways soon after. His disorganised and failed expeditions also put Livingstone’s reputation on the line. Fortunately, he made numerous geographical discoveries for Britain and Europe and opened Central Africa to missionaries, who helped provide education and health care to hundreds of people.

In 2002, David Livingstone was named among the 100 Greatest Britons, although he is by no means a role model. Some argue that he did not explore many new areas of Africa and he did not free many slaves. His family life was also unconventional and he failed to see any of his children grow up. Nonetheless, Livingstone is also celebrated as a hero, particularly for his faith and attitude towards the abolition of slavery.

Livingstone’s legacy lives on in place names across the world. In Africa, there is the Scottish Livingstone Hospital in Botswana, the Livingstone Falls on the River Congo, and several memorials or institutions in Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Zambia. There are also places with his name in Canada, the USA and New Zealand.

In Scotland, the former cotton mills where Livingstone was born are now the David Livingstone Birthplace Museum. There are statues of the explorer in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and several educational institutions have named halls or houses after Livingstone. In Bath, England, a plaque outside 13 The Circus commemorates where Livingstone stayed in 1864 when he spoke to an audience of over 2000 people about his Zambezi expeditions.

Whether a true hero or not, David Livingstone is a well-known name in Britain for contributing his scientific and geographical findings in Africa. Whilst he did not succeed in many missions, he paved the way for other people to follow.

What about Livingstone?
What about all those men?
Who have sacrificed their lives to lead the way
Tell me, wasn’t it worth the while
Traveling up the Nile
Putting themselves on test
Didn’t that help the rest?
Wasn’t it worth it then?
What about Livingstone?
– ABBA, 1974

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