David Livingstone and the Myth of African Poverty and Disease: A Close Examination of his Writing on the Pre-Colonial Era by Sjoerd Rijpma (review)

Sjoerd Rijpma's book, David Livingstone and the Myth of African Poverty and Disease: A Close Examination of His Writings on the Pre-Colonial Era, is an excellent attempt at removing misconceptions about precolonial Africa. It makes obvious that the African continent—the second-largest continent, after Asia—is so diverse that just about anything anybody says about it can be seen as gospel truth in some places and at some points in time.

Given the human trait to attribute the worst to others and the best to oneself, it is unsurprising that what was either forcibly pinned on or stuck to Africa happened to be the worst, especially in published works by negative and skeptical authors, including Joseph Conrad, who saw the entire continent pejoratively, as "the heart of darkness." Therefore, many observations, mostly mythical, but made at some point and at some place, often came to be seen as being true of the whole of the continent. In fact, some of these myths have lasted long and, as a result, only education and time itself can eradicate them.

Rijpma's voluminous book, which covers David Livingstone's expeditions to Africa in the mid-nineteenth century, is enlightening. It either dispels or, at least, casts doubt on some common myths about precolonial Africa. Similar to a well-written dissertation, it begins with three main hypotheses (the author calls them assumptions), which people today and back then rarely held about Africa: that the population was generally healthy and well-fed; that mothers breast-fed their children frequently and over a long period; and that poverty, famine, and wars were of limited magnitude.

The book has three parts and only eight chapters. The Brill Publishers' version I read had 583 pages, without the index; however, add the index and it goes up to 610 pages. It is thoroughly researched, well annotated, and full of details and complexities about Livingstone's crisscrossing the southern part of Africa. The area he covered would include present-day Angola, Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia. The travels were extensive, as they covered long and tedious-to-travel distances; that was why the journeys were slow and perilous—from Luanda in the west, capital of Angola, to Quelimane in present-day Mozambique in the east, and down to Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, both in South Africa.

Livingstone's trips to Africa were ostensibly to convert the Africans to Christianity. He was well prepared. He had been trained as a physician and then as a minister. His journeys are therefore missionary journeys in the biblical sense of Paul the Apostle. Livingstone first went to Africa working for the London Missionary Society, from 1840 to 1856. Between 1858 and 1864, he headed a government expeditionary mission to the Zambezi River. Between 1865 and 1873, he worked for the Royal Geographical Society. Throughout these trips, he learned much from intimate contacts with the Africans and made observations about the environment. It is from these observations, set down in notes, diaries, and books, and from other people's writings about Livingstone's travels in Africa, that Rijpma makes the case that the common notion that precolonial African had been rife with poverty and diseases is a myth.

For students of African history and economic development, the insights that Rijpma brings to light are fascinating and refreshing but also disappointing. They are fascinating because they reveal some truths about Africa that many people today will find difficult to accept, what with the frequent famines and diseases, the wars and poverty, and the stagnation of African economies compared with other developing countries. Rijpma concludes that precolonial Africa was in harmony with its environment, could feed itself, did not suffer any more diseases than other regions, had doctors who for the most part knew what they...