of Darkness

Livingstone’s nightmare world of slavery T

HIS YEAR Livingstone Online, a site devoted to the life of David Livingstone, the famous Scotish

explorer, celebrates its 10th anniversary. Its birthday also coincides with a £3.5 million grant for a new heritage and research centre at Blantyre, Lanarkshire, where Livingstone was born.

The even bigger news is that, aſter two years of international collaboration by specialists, Livingstone Online has been transformed into a stunning, new global resource.

For the first time, scholars and the public have free and direct digital access to 7,500 Livingstone manuscripts, notebooks and other material, rising to 12,000 next year.

An astonishing collection of illustrations drawn by the explorer, himself, has also been amassed. Together they represent the greatest repository of knowledge ever assembled on the world’s most famous missionary explorer. iScot has been taking a peek ...

IN 1866, David Livingstone, the great Victorian explorer, found himself travelling on the African slave route.

His stark words and sketches describing the horror of the ‘slave grave,’ have now been published for the first time in their original format by Livingstone Online, adding a new page of history to the world’s largest collection of in-the-field leters and diaries of the most famous 19th century British explorer in Africa.

Scholars the world over will feel a frisson of excitement as they view the material because it brings to life, in most graphic detail, the life and times of Livingstone. “It’s like looking down a telescope directly into his life,” said one specialist.

It took a two-year international collaboration involving more than 20 specialists to bring the collection together. It now contains 7,500 original images of Livingstone’s manuscripts and other materials. That will increase to 12,000 images by 2016. There is also a stunning collection of illustrative images that demonstrate the modernity and prescience of Livingstone’s passion for freedom and equality.

August 2015

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