How will you be known? For your activity or your impact?

Researching an explorers’s mindset I studied Dr David Livingstone, lost in Africa for 6 years before being “found” by Henry Morton Stanley in 1871 reported greeting him with the celebrated words, “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”

Livingstone’s career comprised 3 major African expeditions: firstly 12 years as a missionary, including an epic trek from Atlantic to Indian Ocean. Second to bring “Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation” via the Zambezi. It was a disaster, he lost his wife, financial security and his .reputation. The last was to the source of the Nile - the greatest geographical question of his day. He failed.

Yet in Livingstone’s many letters and publications about his expeditions, he exposed the horrific slave trade from Zanzibar, which in 1870 sent 25,000 to 50,000 slaves to the Arabian Gulf. He estimated only 1 in 5 of those captured reached the coast alive.

“It's a mistake to call the system “trade” at all; the captives are not traded for, but murdered for, and gangs dragged coast-wards are not slaves, but captive free people.”

Stanley gave Livingstone access to a global audience and saw that two letters wriiten by Livingstone for the New York, Herald were published stirring up yet further public sentiment. In fact Livingstone called on America for help. in ending slave trading “Now, that you have done with domestic slavery forever, lend us your powerful aid towards this great object.”.

Truth is, Livingstone was a terrible missionary, only one short lived conversion - and merely a passable geographer. But as an explorer he changed public understand and sentiment. His profound impact hastened the abolition of this abhorrent practice in East Africa and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.