David Livingstone - Legacy

Legacy

By the late 1860s Livingstone's reputation in Europe had suffered owing to the failure of the missions he set up, and of the Zambezi Expedition; and his ideas about the source of the Nile were not supported. His expeditions were hardly models of order and organization.

His reputation was rehabilitated by Stanley and his newspaper, and by the loyalty of Livingstone's servants whose long journey with his body inspired wonder. The publication of his last journal revealed stubborn determination in the face of suffering.

He had made geographical discoveries for European knowledge. He inspired abolitionists of the slave trade, explorers and missionaries. He opened up Central Africa to missionaries who initiated the education and health care for Africans, and trade by the African Lakes Company. He was held in some esteem by many African chiefs and local people and his name facilitated relations between them and the British.

Partly as a result, within fifty years of his death, colonial rule was established in Africa and white settlement was encouraged to extend further into the interior.

On the other hand, within a further fifty years after that, two other aspects of his legacy paradoxically helped end the colonial era in Africa without excessive bloodshed. Livingstone was part of an evangelical and nonconformist movement in Britain which during the 19th century changed the national mindset from the notion of a divine right to rule 'lesser races', to ethical ideas in foreign policy which, with other factors, contributed to the end of the British Empire. Secondly, Africans educated in mission schools founded by people inspired by Livingstone were at the forefront of national independence movements in central, eastern and southern Africa.

The church which Livingstone attended as a boy closed in 1966. It merged with a local Congregational Church, situated in South Park Street, Hamilton, of which his parents had been amongst the founder members. A small but active congregation continues worshipping and serving as Hamilton United Reformed Church. The Church situated in Park Street originally belonged to the Evangelical Union when it was known as Park Street E.U.Church. In 1896 the Evanglical Union and the Scottish Congregationalists united to form the Congregational Union of Scotland. A member of the Park Street E.U. Church was the young Keir Hardie the founder of the Labour Party in Britain. The majority of Scottish Congregational Churches formed a new United Reformed Church by joining with the existing United Reformed Church in April 2000. Livingstone is also remembered in Argentina. A Congregational Church started a medical centre in a very need part of the city. They took inspiration from Livingstone, whose background was Congregational, and who was also a doctor. And so was born the Dr. Livingstone Healthservice in Jardìn Amèrica, Misiones, Argentina.

The David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre celebrates his life and is based in the house in which he was born, on the site of the mill in which he started his working life. His Christian faith is evident in his journal, where one entry reads: "I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping it I shall promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity."