Zanzibar! Tropical island just off the African coast and these days part of the Republic of Tanzania. It is also known as the Spice Island and there are fragrant reminders of this at every turn.
I don't think I had thought of Livingstone since primary school and then only in the phrase "Dr Livingstone I presume?" I certainly couldn't have told you why he was famous.
He was of course an explorer. Livingstone was one of the first Westerners to make a transcontinental journey across Africa between 1854 and 1856.
The qualities and approaches which gave Livingstone an advantage as an explorer over his predecessors were that he usually travelled lightly, and he had an ability to reassure chiefs that he was not a threat.
Other expeditions had dozens of soldiers armed with rifles and scores of hired porters carrying supplies, and were seen as military incursions or were mistaken for slave-raiding parties.
Livingstone on the other hand, travelled, on most of his journeys, with a few servants and porters, bartering for supplies along the way, with a couple of guns for protection. He preached a Christian message but did not force it on unwilling ears; he understood the ways of local chiefs and successfully negotiated passage through their territory.
Livingstone was not only an explorer however but a proponent of trade and Christian missions to be established in central Africa. His motto, inscribed in the base of the statue to him at Victoria Falls, was "Christianity, Commerce and Civilization".
Believing he had a spiritual calling for exploration rather than mission work, and encouraged by the response in Britain to his discoveries and support for future expeditions, in 1857 he resigned from the London Missionary Society after they demanded that he do more evangelizing and less exploring.
The British government agreed to fund Livingstone and he returned to Africa to examine the natural resources of southeastern Africa and open up the River Zambezi. Unfortunately it turned out to be completely impassable to boats and he eventually returned home in 1864 after the government ordered the recall of the expedition because of its increasing costs and failure to find a navigable route to the interior. The Zambezi Expedition was castigated as a failure in many newspapers of the time, and Livingstone experienced great difficulty in raising funds further to explore Africa.
In January 1866, Livingstone however returned to Africa, this time to Zanzibar to prepare his expedition in search of the source of the River Nile. Zanzibar at that time housed the central slave market in which African men, women and children were sold to work in the "civilized" world.
Appalled by what he saw he wrote in a letter to the editor of the New York Herald
"And if my disclosures regarding the terrible slavery should lead to the suppression of the East Coast slave trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all the Nile sources together."
Britain wanted the body to give it a proper ceremony, but the tribe would not give his body to them. Finally they relented, but cut the heart out and put a note on the body that said, "You can have his body, but his heart belongs in Africa!"
Livingstone's heart was buried under a Mvula tree near the spot where he died. His body together with his journal was carried over a thousand miles by his loyal attendants and was returned to Britain for burial. His remains were interred at Westminster Abbey.
Livingstone's legacy is to Africa and to the world.
Memorial to the Slave Trade - Anglican Christ's Cathedral Zanzibar which is built over the site of the former slave market
He inspired the abolitionists of the slave trade, as welll as explorers and missionaries.
He opened up Central Africa to missionaries who followed and who initiated education and health care for Africans, and trade by the African Lakes Company. He was held in esteem by many African chiefs and local people and his name facilitated relations between them and the British.
Partly as a result, within fifty years of his death, colonial rule was established in Africa and white settlement was encouraged to extend further into the interior.
On the other hand, within a further fifty years after that, his legacy of education paradoxically helped end the colonial era in Africa without excessive bloodshed.
Africans educated in mission schools founded by people inspired by Livingstone were at the forefront of national independence movements in central, eastern and southern Africa.
In addition, Livingstone was part of an evangelical and nonconformist movement in Britain which during the 19th century changed the national mindset from the notion of a divine right to rule 'lesser races', to ethical ideas in foreign policy which, with other factors, contributed to the end of the British Empire.
The David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre, Berkshire celebrates his life and is based on the very house in which he was born and raised, and set on the site of the mill in which he started his working life.
Despite the misgivings of the time David Livingstone has gone down in the annals of history as one of the greatest missionaries who ever lived.
As the words of "O Holy Night" remind us about Jesus
"Truely he taught us
To love one another,
His law is love
And His gospel is peace.
Chains shall he break
To love one another,
His law is love
And His gospel is peace.
Chains shall he break
For the slave is our brother
And in His name
All oppression shall cease."
His complete commitment to Christ is evident in an entry to his journal:
"I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping it I shall promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity."
No comments:
Post a Comment