| As a result, the 1871
Field Diary offers a fascinating glimpse into Livingstone’s
mind at the moment of the greatest crisis in his final travels. Despite
his familiarity with slavery in Africa,
the scale of the Nyangwe massacre exceeds his range of experience, and
he struggles to come to terms with the event. Resistance by the Arab
traders to clarify the underlying motives for the massacre, the chaotic
order of Livingstone’s successive 15 July diary entries, and
his unprecedented shift to hourly entries on 16 July all underscore his
deep vulnerability and confusion at the moment of the massacre. |
Still other moments
reveal Livingstone’s conflicted thoughts regarding an
appropriate response to the violence and his potential culpability for
at least some of it. For instance, Livingstone assists whatever African
villagers come to him for help, as both the 1871 Field Diary and 1872
Journal make clear. In anger, he also considers an extreme response
that is out of character and that he would change in the 1872 version:
"I went over to Dugumbe and proposed to catch the bloodhounds who fired
in the chitoka and on the canoes and put their heads on poles"
(1871a:297b/148; see previous
page
for the 1872 version).
 |
Figure 1. Livingstone, 1871 Field Diary, 297b/148, detail, spectral ratio.
|
|
| Yet Livingstone also
makes
decisions of questionable merit, as when he sends his men with a flag
to assist Manilla’s brother (1871a:297b/147), not
local villagers as the 1872 version would have it. More significantly,
the structuring of events in the 1871 Field Diary foregrounds the
possible role of Livingstone’s Banian slaves in the massacre.
|
| As noted earlier,
Livingstone had previously instructed the Banian slaves to bind and
flog the headman Kalenga when the latter "bamboozled" Livingstone out
of the payment for a canoe (1871a:297b/134). Yet Livingstone compressed
this incident and moved it away temporally from the Nyangwe massacre
when producing the 1872 Journal. It is not clear why Livingstone made
this revision, although he may have feared that readers of his Journal
might believe that his violence towards Kalenga offered some sort of
model for the Arabs. Livingstone notes as much in the 1871 Field Diary:
"I must not be the first to do what may be called injustice
[ – ] The Arabs would like to see me using force"
(1871:297b/135). |
In writing up the 1872
Journal, Livingstone also made other changes to his representations of
the Banian slaves. For instance, he deliberately revised one
particularly damning passage from 30 April 1871. In the 1871 Field
Diary, Livingstone records a report of some Arab traders a few days
distant being in need of assistance. Although called on to send help to
them, Livingstone writes, "I refused to send my slaves because they
would only add to the confusion and murder – If they go
anywhere I must go with them or murder is certain" (1871a:297c/123).
 |
 |
 |
Figures 2, 3, 4. Livingstone, 1871 Field Diary, 297c/123, detail,
in color (top) and processed (pcar and pcolor) versions.
|
|
| In the 1872 Journal,
he
incorporates this comment into an earlier entry, 25 April, and rewords
it as follows: “I declined – because no matter what
charges I gave my Banian slaves would be sure to shed human
blood” (1872a:671). Most obviously, such revisions help diminish
the original sentiments, and there is the temporal distancing once
more. Livingstone’s motives for these revisions again remain
unknown. Certainly the original passage is at odds with his usual
complaints about the resistance of the slaves to further exploration
and their attempts to slander him before the inhabitants of
Nyangwe – relatively mild complaints when compared to the
unrevised passage. Or, put another way, Livingstone’s overall
presentation of the Banian slaves becomes more benign – however
contemptuous it might still seem – when the passage regarding
their murderous tendencies is reworded. |
| In the 1872 Journal,
the
consistency of such "benign" representations serves at least one
significant narrative purpose. It gives Livingstone grounds to refute
the accusation leveled by Arab slave traders that the Banian slaves had
a role in carrying out the Nyangwe massacre: |
|
Two wretched Moslems asserted "that the firing was done by the people
of the English" I asked one of them why he lied so and he could utter
no excuse – no other falsehood came to his aid as he stood
abashed before me and telling him not to tell palpable falsehoods left
him gaping (1872a:694). |
| In the 1871 Field
Diary,
the representation of this moment and Livingstone’s response
is much more ambiguous: |
|
shot after shot followed on the terrified fugitives = great numbers
died – and a worthless Moslem asserted that all was done by
the people of the English – This will spread though the
murderers are on the other side plundering and shooting – It is awful – terrible (1871a:
297b/146) |
Although
Livingstone’s prose may imply a refutation, explicitly he
fails to foreclose the possibility that his slaves took part in the
Nyangwe massacre. Moreover, the difference between the two versions
again helps to foreground a larger pattern of apparent revision.
 |
Figure 5. Livingstone, 1871 Field Diary, 297b/146, detail,
spectral ratio. Livingstone significantly revised this passage for the
1872 Journal.
|
|
| * |
| Dorothy Helly has
written
eloquently of the public impact of Livingstone’s description
of the Nyangwe massacre in the 1871 letter to Earl Granville: |
|
Livingstone’s vivid characterization of the wholesale
bloodshed that could disrupt daily life in Africa as a consequence of
the slave trade came at a crucial moment. His words fed into a
well-planned campaign recently launched within antislavery circles to
stir up public clamor for ending the seaborne slave trade that supplied
the Middle East and the island of Zanzibar and its sources on the
adjacent East Coast of Africa (1987:26). |
British abolitionists
achieved this objective just one year after the publication of
Livingstone’s letter, with the signing in June 1873 of the
treaty between Britain and the Sultan of Zanzibar for the suppression
of the slave trade. Livingstone and his cause, writes Helly (1987:27),
"would thereafter remain synonymous, just as Wilberforce’s
name had come to symbolize the antislavery cause on the Atlantic coast
of Africa earlier in the century."
 |
 |
Figures 6, 7. Livingstone, 1871 Field Diary, 297c/133,
in color (left)
and spectral ratio (right) versions. One of the
most difficult
pages of the diary to transcribe, even with
the benefit of spectral
image processing.
|
|
| The 1871 Field
Diary – only now made available through spectral imaging and
processing – opens a new dimension in our understanding of
these historical developments. It is not unreasonable to suppose, given
the revisions cited above, that Livingstone’s slaves had a
part in inciting the Nyangwe massacre or, at least, that Livingstone feared
that their actions and his own had helped launch the chain of violent
events that led to the massacre. As a result, he sought to
downplay these points when revising the 1871 Field Diary to produce the
1872 Journal. |
| Of course, we cannot
confirm this hypothesis without the discovery of more evidence.
However, if true, it would mean that by bringing these Banian slaves to
Nyangwe, Livingstone – however inadvertently – helped
occasion the horrific event that transformed the trajectory of his
final travels in Africa and
that established the image of the tireless abolitionist crusader that
we remember today. |
|
|
