1. David Livingstone
John Hanning Speke (4 May 1827 – 15
September 1864) was an officer in the
British Indian Army who made three
exploratory expeditions to Africa and who is
most associated with the search for the
source of the Nile and the discovery and
naming of Lake Victoria.Speke was born on
4 May 1827 at Orleigh Court, Buckland
Brewer near Bideford, North Devon. In 1844
he was commissioned into the British army
and posted to India, where he served under
Sir Colin Campbell during the First AngloSikh W He spent his leave exploring the
ar.
Himalayan Mountains and Mount Everest
and once crossed into Tibet.
2. David Livingstone
Livingstone was one of the first
W
esterners to make a transcontinental
journey across Africa, Luanda on the
Atlantic to Quelimane on the Indian
Ocean near the mouth of the Zambezi, in
1854–56. Despite repeated European
attempts, especially by the Portuguese,
central and southern Africa had not been
crossed by Europeans at that latitude
owing to their susceptibility to malaria,
dysentery and sleeping sickness which
was prevalent in the interior and which
also prevented use of draught animals
(oxen and horses), as well as to the
opposition of powerful chiefs and tribes,
such as the Lozi, and the Lunda of
Mwata Kazembe.
3. David Livingstone
The River Nile:
In January 1866, Livingstone returned to
Africa, this time to Zanzibar, from where
he set out to seek the source of the Nile.
Livingstone believed the source was
farther south and assembled a team of
freed slaves, Comoros Islanders, twelve
Sepoys and two servants, Chuma and
Susi, from his previous expedition to find
it.
Geographical
discoveries:
Although Livingstone was wrong about
the Nile, he discovered for Western
science numerous geographical features,
such as Lake Ngami, Lake Malawi, and
Lake Bangweulu in addition to Victoria
Falls mentioned above.
4. David Livingstone
Stanley meeting:
Livingstone completely lost contact
with the outside world for six years
and was ill for most of the last four
years of his life.
Henry Morton Stanley, who had been
sent to find him by the New York
Herald newspaper in 1869, found
Livingstone in the town of Ujiji.
Christianity and Sechele:
Although Livingstone is known as
"Africa's greatest missionary,” he
is only recorded as having
converted one African: Sechele,
who was the chief of the Kwena
people of Botswana. Kwena, is
one of the main Sotho-Tswana
clans, they are found in three
countries namely South Africa,
Lesotho and Botswana.
5. David Livingstone
Death:
David Livingstone died in that area in Chief
Chitambo's village at Ilala southeast of Lake
Bangweulu in present-day Zambia on 1 May
1873 allegedly from malaria and internal
bleeding caused by dysentery.
Livingstone and
slavery:
Livingstone's letters, books, and
journals did stir up public support
for the abolition of slavery;
however, he became humiliatingly
dependent for assistance on the
very slave-traders whom he wished
to put out of business.
6. David Livingstone
Legacy:
By the late 1860s Livingstone's reputation in
Europe had suffered owing to the failure of the
missions he set up, and of the Zambezi
Expedition; and his ideas about the source of the
Nile were not supported. His expeditions were
hardly models of order and organisation.
Archives:
The archives of David Livingstone are
maintained by the Archives of the University
of Glasgow (GUAS). On 11 November 2011,
Livingstone's 1871 Field Diary, as well as
other original works, was published online
for the first time by the David Livingstone
Spectral Imaging Project.
Papers relating to Livingstone's time as a
London Missionary Society missionary
(including hand-annotated maps of South
East Africa) are held by the Archives of the
School of Oriental and African Studies.
