Composite Views
Livingstone’s lantern and its appearance in text not only provides information about the global circulation of British-made objects, but it also serves as a touchstone for the ways that Livingstone remediated his experience of a complex African cultural landscape through the materialities of journals, letters, and published accounts. The geographic distribution of references to Livingstone’s lantern shows indicates that the ripple effect of the Mfecane had a profound effect on the tone of Livingstone’s lantern shows specifically and the overarching trajectory of his travels more broadly. For African audiences, the lantern show created a space in which they could negotiate their place within emergent trade networks. As one of the key Lunda villages along the Zambezi, Kabompo functions as an epicenter for these negotiations.
The audience at the lantern show in Kabompo serves as a microcosm of the complex political landscape of the region between Linyanti and Luanda. Here, Livingstone’s Kololo comrades watched the projected images with the calm demeanor of those who had rapidly acculturated to the lantern as a technological novelty. The Lunda Ishinde saw the lantern show as an opportunity to demonstrate his wealth and power, projecting an image of stability and willingness to trade. The Lozi members of the expedition played an integral role in this process by serving as translators, even though their way of life had been upended by the Kololo conquest. These African communities were not only eager to secure firearms and cloth from the Atlantic coast, but they were also aware that Livingstone could afford them a measure of protection from the Ndebele to the east, for Livingstone was related by marriage to Mzilikazi ’s close friend Robert Moffat. Though the new trade network promised to benefit the communities in Africa’s interior, those who had been middlemen in older Portuguese trade systems, including the Mambari traders living on the fringes of Kabompo, felt threatened by the Kololo expedition.
The materialities of mediation—the lantern show, Livingstone’s field-authored writings, and published narratives— represent African agency to varying degrees. Livingstone’s journals reveal that Africans co-opted the lantern show in ways that he often did not expect. At times, African contributions to the lantern show undermined his pedagogical goals. At others, the mechanical limitations of the lantern threatened to undo the tenuous peace established by the Kololo and Lozi members of his party with their northern neighbors. The remediation of these moments in print gave Livingstone the opportunity to downplay how frustrating these moments could be for a missionary. Livingstone’s emphasis on his own agency, particularly in his public addresses, celebrate his evangelistic efforts, but his published narrative does not entirely remove the African voices and perspectives that he encountered.
Livingstone’s Legacy
It is worth noting briefly that the account of Livingstone’s lantern show circulated globally through his biography, missionary magazines, and popularizations. Missionary Travels reached American audiences through editions published by Harper & Brothers in New York. Livingstone’s packing list (which included the lantern) and the lantern show at Kobompo appeared in the LMS’ periodical for children[1] and the Wesleyan-Methodist Juvenile Companion and Sunday School Hive[2], while popularizations of Missionary Travels aimed at juvenile readers included the lantern show as well.[3] Some of these biographies embellished more than others. In David Livingstone: the Story of His Life and Travels, the author summarizes the events following Livingstone’s reception at Kabompo as follows:The added detail of the canvas remediated the conventions of British magic lantern shows, though it is unclear what Livingstone used as a projection surface. Other biographies, including E.A. Manning’s The Life and Explorations of David Livingstone (1875) and Thomas Hughes’ The Life of David LIvingstone (1902), reluctantly include the lantern in his packing list but excise all references to lantern shows.We have no space to record the various incidents that marked Livingstone’s friendly intercourse with the Balonda chief. He showed him the magic-lantern with great effect,— most of the people rushing out in dismay when the canvas reflected a representation of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac; and he was visited in his tent by Shinte, who examined with intense interest and delight his various effects, and presented him with a string of beads, attached to a large conical shell as a crowning proof of his friendship.[4]
Through this print material, Livingstone’s influence and celebrity reached beyond the confines of the London Missionary Society. A letter from Alfred Stackhouse, an Anglican missionary, to the Foreign Secretary of the Church Missionary Society reveals that news of Livingstone’s lantern shows had spread as far as Launceston, Tasmania. Stackhouse frames his expectations of the lantern’s efficacy in light of Livingstone’s account:
The letter gestures to the CMS missionaries who were also using lanterns to aid their missionary efforts, despite the fact that there was no official support for the use of projected images until the formation of the CMS’ visual education department in 1895. In my case study of Samuel and Dandeson Crowther, I will explore how periodical literature in the 1860s and 70s solidified the lantern’s reputation as an educational tool and paved the way for the proliferation of missionaries with lanterns in the age of photography.I have just received a new magic lantern & some beautiful views of missionary subjects which will be much appreciated particularly in the towns. They are very expensive: but I hope the effect will be in proportion. I see that Livingstone carried a magic lantern with him in Africa- It is a great help here also.[5]
[1] “Dr. Livingstone and his Missionary Travels,” The Juvenile Missionary Magazine, vol. 15, no. 174, March 1858, p. 62, accessed via 19th Century UK Periodicals.
[2] “Incidents and Sketches of Dr. Livingstone’s African Travels,” The Juvenile Companion and Sunday School Hive, March 1858, p. 62, accessed via 19th Century UK Periodicals.
[3] Examples of books in this vein include Rev. S. A. W. Jewett’s Livingstone in Africa: His Explorations and Missionary Labors (1869), C. Silvester Horne’s Livingstone (1913), and Basil Mathew’s Livingstone, the Pathfinder (1912).
[4] David Livingstone: the Story of His Life and Travels by an unnamed author (T. Nelson, 1888), p. 20. Accessible via Hathi Trust. His packing list appears on p. 16.
[5] “Letter to Henry Venn,” Church Missionary Society Archive, University of Birmingham Special Collections, Birmingham, England, CMS/G/AC 16/183, 8 June 2016, p. 3.
