I.

Introduction

David Livingstone (1813-1873), Scottish missionary and physician, who spent half his life exploring southern and central Africa. In addition to adding greatly to Europe’s knowledge of the continent’s geography, he heightened Western awareness of Africa and stimulated Christian missionary activity there. His activities helped bring about the Scramble for Africa, in which European powers seized virtually all of Africa in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland, to religious, working-class parents. At age ten he began working in the local cotton mill, with long hours and meager pay. He read and studied diligently when not at work and in 1836 entered Anderson’s College (now the University of Strathclyde) in Glasgow. Theology and medicine were his primary interests. In 1838 the London Missionary Society accepted him as a candidate, and two years later he received a medical degree from the University of Glasgow. The First Opium War (1839-1842) between Britain and China ruined his hopes of becoming a medical missionary to China, but the missionary society arranged a new placement for him in southern Africa.