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Livingstone
David
Narrative of an expedition to the Zambesi and its tributaries; and of the discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864
Book
London
John Murray
1865
English
Exploration du Zambèse et de ses affluents et découverte des lacs Chiroua et Nyassa (Paris: Hachette, 1866). French. Lo Zambese ed i suoi affluenti (Milano: Fratelli Treves, 1873). Italian. Nya missionsresor i Afrika : forskningar vid Zambesi och dess bifloder, jemte upptäckandet af sjöarne Shirwa och Nyassa (Stockholm: [n.p.], 1867). Swedish.
Travel Writings
British Library. Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Rhodes House, Oxford. Brotherton Special Collections, University of Leeds.
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Expedition Travel Livingstone Discovery Africa Slavery Slave Trade Internal
One of the most well-known explorers and missionaries of the nineteenth century, Livingstone was horrified by the continuation of the slave trade in Africa, which overshadowed his expedition along the Zambesi river and, influenced by the abolitionist Thomas Fowell Buxton, argued that the "civilizing influence" of missionary activity and commerce was the only way of ending the trade. His eye-witness reports describing wars and slave raids on villages influenced the revived abolitionist movement from the late 1860s onwards, and helped to justify Europe's colonization of Africa. Livingstone, who considered his expedition the first to witness the entire process of enslavement, estimated that for every victim of slavery that reached the coast, another four died in wars or en route, and describes finding skeletons along the length of the expedition's route. In his Narrative of an expedition to the Zambesi, he recommends armed intervention to stop the trade.
Additional author: Charles Livingstone. Includes map and illustrations. See also Livingstone's other major publications: Missionary travels and researches in South Africa : including a sketch of sixteen years' residence in the interior of Africa (1857) and Last Journals in Central Africa from 1865 to his death (1874). Livingstone's travels were the subject of much discussion at the 1867 Paris Anti-Slavery Conference, where his travel companion Horace Waller made a report on slave trading in Africa (Conference Proceedings, 15-16). They were also central in later abolitionist texts such as Joseph Cooper's The Lost Continent (1875).