David Livingstone – Biography of David Livingstone

David livingstone He was born in the small town of Blantyre, Scotland, on March 19, 1813. He studied at the Faculty of Medicine and Theology in Glasgow and in 1838 he entered the London Missionary Society with the aim of reaching China, but due to the opium war which was unleashed in China, he could not fulfill his wish.

At the end of the year 1840 he was assigned to the missions of Africa, more precisely, to the territory of the Bantu tribe of the Bechuana, in the State of Botswana. He reached his destination in July 1841.

Three years later, in 1844, David livingstone he married Maria Moffat, daughter of another missionary, Robert Moffat. The wife stayed with him in Africa for a few years, and then returned to her homeland, on British soil, together with her children.

Between 1852 and 1856 Livingstone He had the opportunity to explore the interior of Africa: he was responsible for the discovery of the falls that the natives call Mosi-oa-Tunya (“the smoke that thunders”) and that he renamed Victoria Falls.

Livingstone He was one of the first Europeans to complete a transcontinental journey through Africa. The ultimate goal was to open new trade routes and accumulate useful information about the African territory.

Defender of missions and trade in Central Africa, par Livingstone, the fundamental key to trade was the Zambezi River and its navigability. He returned to England to ask for help and support for these ideas; published his theories and his travel notes in a book. In this same period he resigned from the missionary society to which he belonged.

Livingstone He returned to Africa leading an expedition whose objective was to explore the Zambezi River. In his period on the river, the missions he had founded in central and eastern Europe were experiencing a disastrous end: almost all the missionaries had died from malaria or other diseases. The Zambezi River was otherwise difficult and almost impossible to navigate due to a series of waterfalls and rapids that Livingstone it had not been calculated or explored in its previous reconnaissance.

His wife Mary Moffat died April 29, 1863 from dysentery. Livingstone, determined in favor of his objective, he continued with the explorations. Upon his return to England only in 1864, he encountered major difficulties in raising new funds to re-explore Africa because British newspapers of the time classified the expedition on the Zambezi River as a great failure.

He managed to return to Africa, Zanzibar, in March 1866. From here he began to search for the origin of the Nile. Previously, Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, and Samuel Baker had identified as the source of the Nile either Lake Albert or Lake Victoria, but the question was still open for discussion. To search for the source of the Nile, Livingstone he went very far west, to the Lualaba River which is nothing more than the beginning of the Congo River, which he mistakenly recognized as the Nile.

Livingstone he fell ill and for the next six years completely lost contact with the outside world. In 1869, the explorer Henry Morton Stanley began searching for Livingstone by finding him in the town of Ujiji, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, on November 10, 1871.

Stanley and Livingstone they joined together for a year and continued together with the exploration of northern Tanganyika; then Stanley left to go home. Despite Stanley’s efforts, Livingstone He was determined not to leave the African territory before he had completed his mission.

David livingstone He died on May 1, 1873 in Zambia, after contracting malaria, and due to internal bleeding caused by an intestinal obstruction.

His body was transported over a thousand miles away by his loyal assistants Chuma and Susi, before returning to England, where he was buried in Westminster Abbey; the heart of Livingstone however he remained in Africa, buried at the place of his death, at Lake Bangweulu in Chitomba (Zambia).