David Livingstone and the Other Slave Trade, Part I.

2013 marks the bicentennial of Scottish explorer David Livingstone (1813-1873).  His explorations in central Africa are well known – – “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”  Less well known is his first-hand encounter with the horrors of the Arab slave trade in East Africa.  Two Smithsonian Libraries – – the Warren M. Robbins Library at the National Museum of African Art and the Joseph F. Cullman 3^rd Library at the National Museum of Natural History – – have exceptional collections on David Livingstone and 19^th-century African exploration.  Drawing upon our Smithsonian Libraries’ resources,  volunteer Judith Schaefer recounts David Livingstone and the other slave trade.

Part I.  Initiation to Slavery

No one can understand the effect of the unutterable meanness of the slave-system on the minds of those who, but for the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the degradation of not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered, would be equal in virtue to ourselves. Fraud becomes as natural to them as ‘paying one’s way’ is to the rest of mankind. [1]

Thus did David Livingstone realize early on that slavery ruined not only the lives of the enslaved but also the character of the men who owned and traded them.  This fearless, independent, strong-willed Lowland Scot, a medical missionary by training, believer in hard work and the doctrine of “Self-Help,” first encountered the reality of slavery in southern Africa, in the region known now as Botswana.

In 1847, he and his wife established  a mission there among the Bakwena people, where he made his only convert— Sechele, the king of the Bakwena.  This extraordinary man, who quickly learned to read and write, eventually spread Christianity more effectively than the dour Scotsman ever did, for Livingston’s religious zeal was soon combined with another cause.

 

The immediate problem was the Boers.  Historically, these Dutch settlers had not only imported slaves from Madagascar but also seized local Africans, mostly women and children, to serve as domestic servants and farm workers.  Some years earlier, Boer farmers had emigrated from the British Cape Colony into Sechele’s kingdom, their unfortunate customs still in force.  In 1852, they raided Kolobeng, the village where the Livingstones lived.  “The Boers plundered my house,” he wrote to a friend, “and carried off upwards of two hundred children after killing many of the adults . . . I felt it to be my duty to expose the slave-making deeds of the Boers in a letter to government.”[3]  So began his passionate crusade against “the curse of Africa.”

That same year, Livingstone set out to explore the vast Zambezi River basin.[4]   He first traveled west, through Portuguese Angola to the coast.  Even though the infamous Atlantic slave trade had been abolished in 1803 and 1837, the demand for slaves persisted, mainly in Brazil, and Portuguese slavers were encountered along the way, driving their wretched booty to market, made a lasting impression.

                           

The trans-Atlantic trade was, of course, not news to Livingstone, but what he saw next, following the Zambezi River back downstream all the way to the Indian Ocean and the Portuguese colony on the coast, was an unhappy surprise.  Africans in the interior were trading slaves to the Portuguese, who sold them to Swahili and Arab traders in Mozambique, who in turn sent them to markets throughout the Arab world.

It was easy money, inducing Africans to ignore the natural wealth around them, such as deposits of coal, iron ore, copper, all evident to a European eye.

Livingstone realized that simply making the slave trade illegal wouldn’t solve the problem.  Africans needed a different economy, one based on legitimate African products and requiring infrastructure.

In talking with my companions over these matters, the idea was suggested that, if the slave-market were supplied with articles of European manufacture by legitimate commerce, the trade in slaves would become impossible. It seemed more feasible to give the goods, for which the people now part with their servants, in exchange for ivory and other products of the country, and thus prevent the trade at the beginning, than to try to put a stop to it at any of the subsequent steps. This could only be effected by establishing a highway from the coast into the centre of the country.[7]

Development of infrastructure to stimulate trade is, to this day, a concern throughout the continent.

The slave trade didn’t require roads.  Slaves transported themselves to market along age-old foot trails, and if many died along the way, so what?  But for legitimate trade—in mineral wealth, agricultural products, and, unfortunately, ivory—roads and means of transport were needed.   What helped create wealth in industrialized Britain would surely work here, too.  “One can easily detect the ‘hidden hand’ of Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment in . . . Livingstone’s economic philosophy.”[8]

Critics might argue that this would still be a form of exploitation of Africa by Europe.  But it was a more civilized way of exploiting people than destroying or taking its strong men and women across the seas to slavery. . . . The core of Livingstone’s point of view was the relevance of economic arguments to moral issues.[9]

 

 Stay tuned for Part 2 in this series!

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