Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T19:37:48.671Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

INTERSTITIAL CARTOGRAPHER: DAVID LIVINGSTONE AND THE INVENTION OF SOUTH CENTRAL AFRICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2009

Adrian S. Wisnicki
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Upon returning to England in December 1856 after sixteen years in the interior of southern Africa, David Livingstone, the celebrated missionary and explorer, received an enthusiastic welcome. Already a household name because of his well-publicized discoveries and travels, Livingstone now found himself a hero of national stature. The Royal Geographical Society and the London Missionary Society organized large receptions in his honor; he received the freedoms of several cities, including London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow; Oxford University awarded him an honorary D.C.L. (Doctor of Civil Law); and Queen Victoria invited him to a private audience (Schapera ix-x). Likewise, the encyclopedic narrative of his adventures, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857), garnered numerous favorable reviews, sold some 70,000 copies, and ultimately made the explorer a rich man. Livingstone's narrative, wrote one early reviewer, opened up “a mystic and inscrutable continent,” while the story of Livingstone's famous four-year transcontinental journey – the first such documented journey in history – inspired admiration for being “performed without the help of civilized associate, trusting only to the resources of his own gallant heart and to the protection of the missionary's God” (“Dr. Livingstone's African Researches” 107). In promoting the Zambesi River as a natural highway into the interior of Africa and in advocating for the three C's – Christianity, commerce, and civilization – as a means to ending the slave-trade and opening the continent's natural riches to the outside world, Missionary Travels also struck a resounding chord with the public. Reviewers welcomed Livingstone's pronouncements, while describing the missionary as “an instrument, divinely appointed by Providence for the amelioration of the human race and the furtherance of God's glory” (“Livingstone's Missionary Travels” 74).

Type
Work in Progress
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 255 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Abraham, G. W. “Recent African Explorations.” The Dublin Review 869 (Mar. 1858): 158–80.Google Scholar
Brantlinger, Patrick. Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Buxton, Meriel. David Livingstone. New York: Palgrave, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and John Comnroff, . Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. 2 vols. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Kock, Leon. Civilising Barbarians: Missionary Narrative and African Textual Response in Nineteenth-Century South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. “Thanks to Doctor Livingstone.” Household Words 17.49 (23 Jan. 1858): 121–25.Google Scholar
“Dr. Livingstone's African Researches.” British Quarterly Review 561 (Jan. 1858): 105–32.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Capital 1848–1875. New York: Vintage, 1996.Google Scholar
Holmes, Timothy. Journey to Livingstone: Exploration of an Imperial Myth. Edinburgh: Canongate, 1993.Google Scholar
Jeal, Tim. “David Livingstone: A Brief Biographical Account.” David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with Africa. National Portrait Gallery. London: National Portrait Gallery, 1996. 11–78.Google Scholar
Jeal, Tim. Livingstone. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Johnston, Anna. “British Missionary Publishing, Missionary Celebrity, and Empire.” Nineteenth-Century Prose 32.2 (Fall 2005): 20–47.Google Scholar
Lewes, G. H. “African Life.” Westminster Review 1518 (Jan. 1858): 1–28.Google Scholar
Livingstone, Charles, and Livingstone, David. Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries and of the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858–1864. London: J. Murray, 1865.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livingstone, David. Family Letters 1841–1856. 2 vols. Ed. Schapera, I.. London: Chatto & Windus, 1959.Google Scholar
Livingstone, David. Livingstone's African Journal 1853–1856. 2 vols. Ed. Schapera, I.. Berkeley: U of California P, 1963.Google Scholar
Livingstone, David. Livingstone's Missionary Correspondence 1841–1856. Ed. Schapera, I.. London: Chatto & Windus, 1961.Google Scholar
Livingstone, David. Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. London: John Murray, 1857.Google Scholar
Livingstone, David. Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. 1857. 2 vols. Santa Barbara: The Narrative Press, 2001.Google Scholar
“Livingstone's Missionary Travels.” Dublin University Magazine 2873 (Jan. 1858): 56–74.Google Scholar
“Livingstone's Travels in South Africa.” Athenaeum 1568 (14 Nov. 1857): 1419–22.Google Scholar
Northcott, William Cecil. David Livingstone: His Triumph, Decline and Fall. London: Lutterworth, 1973.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Ronald, and Gallagher, John. Africa and the Victorians. The Official Mind of Imperialism. London: Macmillan, 1981.Google Scholar
Ross, Andrew. “David Livingstone: The Man Behind the Mask.” The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, 1799–1999. Ed. de Gruchy, John. Athens: Ohio UP, 2000. 37–54.Google Scholar
Ross, Andrew. David Livingstone: Mission and Empire. London: Hambledon and London, 2002.Google Scholar
Schapera, I. Introduction. Livingstone's African Journal 1853–1856. By Livingstone, David. 2 vols. Ed. Schapera, I.. Berkeley: U of California P, 1963. ix–xxii.Google Scholar
Schwer, Mary Angela. “Religious and Imperialist Discourse in Nineteenth-Century British Popular Missionary Literature.” Diss. U of Notre Dame, 1996.Google Scholar
Thomas, Nicholas. Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994.Google Scholar