David Livingstone | |
|---|---|
 Livingstone in 1864 | |
| Born | 19 March 1813 |
| Died | 1 May 1873 (aged 60)[1] Chief Chitambo's Village, Kingdom of Kazembe (today Northern Province, Zambia) |
| Resting place | Westminster Abbey 51°29′58″N 0°07′39″W / 51.499444°N 0.1275°W |
| Known for | Proselytizing Christianity, exploration of Africa, and meeting with Henry Stanley |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 6 |
| Signature | |
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David Livingstone FRGS FRS (/ˈlɪvɪŋstən/; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, pioneer Christian missionary[2] with the London Missionary Society, and an explorer in Africa. Livingstone was married to Mary Moffat Livingstone, from the prominent 18th-century Moffat missionary family.[3] Livingstone came to have a mythic status that operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion. As a result, Livingstone became one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era.
Livingstone's fame as an explorer and his obsession with learning the sources of the Nile was founded on the belief that if he could solve that age-old mystery, his fame would give him the influence to end the East African Arab–Swahili slave trade. "The Nile sources", he told a friend, "are valuable only as a means of opening my mouth with power among men. It is this power [with] which I hope to remedy an immense evil."[4] His subsequent exploration of the central African watershed was the culmination of the classic period of European geographical discovery and colonial penetration of Africa. At the same time, his missionary travels, "disappearance", and eventual death in Africa—and subsequent glorification as a posthumous national hero in 1874—led to the founding of several major central African Christian missionary initiatives carried forward in the era of the European "Scramble for Africa".[5]
- ^ "David Livingstone (1813–1873)". BBC – History – Historic Figures. 2014. Retrieved 12 July 2018.
- ^ Easton, Mark (3 September 2017). "Why don't many British tourists visit Victoria Falls?". BBC News. Retrieved 12 July 2018.
- ^ Bayly, Paul (2013). David Livingstone, Africa's greatest explorer : the man, the missionary and the myth. Stroud. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-78155-333-6. OCLC 853507173.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Jeal 2013, p. 289.
- ^ Mackenzie, John M. (1990). "David Livingstone: The Construction of the Myth". In Walker, Graham; Gallagher, Tom (eds.). Sermons and battle hymns: Protestant popular culture in modern Scotland. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-0217-9.