Sir John Kirk, GCMG , KCB , FRS (19 December 1832 – 15 January 1922) was a physician, naturalist, companion to explorer David Livingstone, and British administrator in Zanzibar, where he was instrumental in ending the slave trade in that country, with the aid of his political assistant, Ali bin Saleh bin Nasser Al-Shaibani.
He was born on 19 December 1832 in Barry, Angus, near Arbroath, Scotland, and earned his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh, presenting his thesis 'On functional disease of the heart'. [1]
Kirk's daughter, Helen, married Major-General Henry Brooke Hagstromer Wright CB CMG, the brother of the famous bacteriologist and immunologist, Sir Almroth Edward Wright and of Sir Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright, Secretary and Librarian of London Library. Kirk's son Colonel John William Carnegie Kirk was author of A British Garden Flora. The engineer, Alexander Carnegie Kirk, was John Kirk's elder brother.
From 1858 to 1864, John Kirk, accompanied by his assistant Ali bin Saleh bin Nasser Al-Shaibani, an Omani-born historian who lived in Zanzibar, worked with Dr David Livingstone on the Second Zambezi Expedition as a botanist. [2] [3] This visit later encouraged his work to end the East African slave trade, assisted by Al-Shaibani. In this trip, they visited the Zomba Plateau and Lake Chilwa in present-day Malawi, and in September 1859 he and Al-Shaibani accompanied Livingstone up the Shire River to Lake Malawi, which they explored by boat. [4] Kirk found Livingstone an inept leader and in 1862 wrote I can come to no other conclusion than that Dr. Livingstone is out of his mind and a most unsafe leader". [5]
The Kirk Range, which lies west of the Shire River and forms part of the Malawi-Mozambique border, is named after Kirk. [6]
In 1866, Livingstone began his next and final expedition, to find the source of the Nile, from Zanzibar. From Livingstone's subsequent correspondence during the expedition it seems that Kirk remained in Zanzibar and did not continue with the rest of the party. [7] After Livingstone's death in 1873, Kirk and Al-Shaibani pledged to continue his work to end the East African slave trade.
Kirk arrived in southern Somalia in 1873 during a period of great economic prosperity with the region being dominated by the Geledi Sultanate and the Hiraab Imamate. Trade between the ports of Mogadishu, Merca and the interior Geledi Sultanate flourished during Geledi Sultan Ahmed Yusuf's reign. Kirk noted a variety of other things. Roughly 20 large dhows were docked in both Mogadishu and Merka respectively filled with grain produced from the farms of the Geledi in the interior. Kirk met the Hirab Imam Mahmood who reigned over Mogadishu. The Shabelle river itself was referred to as the 'Geledi river' by Kirk, perhaps in respect of the sheer volume of produce that the Sultanate output. In Barawa there was little grain instead a large quantity of ivory and skins which had already been loaded onto ships destined for Zanzibar. [8] He stated that Sultan Ahmed Yusuf controlled a vast territory stretching from Mogadishu to the Jubba region and had 50,000 troops at his command. [9]
From his appointment in 1865 the British Consul in Zanzibar, Henry Adrian Churchill worked on the abolition of the slave trade on the island, however his heavy workload and the adverse climate took a toll on his health in 1869 and Kirk, who was his physician and Vice Consul, advised him to leave for London for the sake of his health. Churchill left in December 1870 leaving Kirk to undertake his duties as acting Consul. [10]
Kirk, together with his assistant, Ali bin Saleh Al-Shaibani, continued Churchill's work on the slave trade and in June 1873 he received simultaneous contradictory instructions from London on the Zanzibar slave trade, one to issue an ultimatum to Sultan Bargash, under threat of blockade that the slave trade should be stopped and the slave market closed, and the other not to enforce a blockade which might be taken as an act of war pushing Zanzibar towards French protection. Kirk only showed the first instruction to Barghash, who capitulated within two weeks. [11]
In August 1873 he was appointed British Consul in Zanzibar [12] and in 1875 was also appointed Consul in the Comoro Islands, [13] and in 1881 was appointed Consul general in Zanzibar, and made Al-Shaibani as his political advisor with the task of smoothing out tensions between the British and the Sultan of Zanzibar. [14] One of his Vice-Consuls, appointed in 1883, was Lieutenant Charles Stewart Smith, who had earlier served in the anti-slaving patrols launched from HMS London. For years he negotiated with Sultan Barghash, with the help of Al-Shaibany, gaining his confidence and promising to help enrich the East African domain through legitimate commerce. By 1885 the region was larger and more profitable. It is a role that Al-Shaibany proved to be crucial in aiding the British to reach a settlement with Sultan Barghash to abolish slavery in Zanzibar.
He was British Minister Plenipotentiary at the 1890 Slave Act Conference in Brussels. [15] [16]
Kirk photographed many scenes and people during his travels in East Africa. Examples include "Hamed bin Muhammed, slave and ivory trader", "Female retainers of Swahili household in gala dress", and "A panoramic view of Zanzibar".
He was a keen botanist throughout his life and published many papers from his findings in East Africa. He was highly regarded by successive directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: William Hooker, Joseph Dalton Hooker and William Turner Thiselton-Dyer.
He introduced a very distinct and pretty species of orchid to the United Kingdom, subsequently named Angraecum scottianum . [17]
Kirkia which is a genus of plant in family Kirkiaceae. It was previously placed in family Simaroubaceae, but was transferred into Kirkiaceae, together with Pleiokirkia , it was published by Oliv. in Hooker's Icon. Pl. vol.11 on page 26 in 1868. [18]
Also, Gossypioides kirkii , a new species of cotton from East Tropical Africa, [19] Ochna kirkii, an evergreen shrub, and Uapaca kirkiana , a miombo woodland tree of southern Africa, [20] were named after him.
He studied the wildlife in East Africa and published many papers. He collected many birds from Zanzibar and East Africa. [21] In 1892, he was credited with the third largest elephant tusk among animal trophy hunters. [22]
He collected many specimens of Lake Malawi fish on the Zambezi expedition. [23]
According to sources, [24] Kirk first drew zoologists' attention to the Zanzibar red colobus, [25] which is also commonly known as Kirk's red colobus. This species, Procolobus kirkii, which is endemic to Zanzibar, is named after him.
Also, a species of African lizard, Agama kirkii , is named in his honour, [26] as is a species of African amphibian, Kirk's caecilian ( Scolecomorphus kirkii ) [27] and the fish Kirk's blenny (Alticus kirkii). [28] The Lake Malawi Cichlid fish Protomelas kirkii is named after Kirk.
He died on 15 January 1922 aged 89, and was buried in St. Nicholas' churchyard in Sevenoaks, Kent, England.
Sir Henry Morton Stanley was a Welsh-American explorer, journalist, soldier, colonial administrator, author and politician who was famous for his exploration of Central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone. Besides his discovery of Livingstone, he is mainly known for his search for the sources of the Nile and Congo rivers, the work he undertook as an agent of King Leopold II of the Belgians which enabled the occupation of the Congo Basin region, and his command of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He was knighted in 1897, and served in Parliament as a Liberal Unionist member for Lambeth North from 1895 to 1900.
David Livingstone was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era. David was the husband of Mary Moffat Livingstone, from the prominent 18th Century missionary family, Moffat. He had a mythic status that operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion.
The British Central Africa Protectorate (BCA) was a British protectorate proclaimed in 1889 and ratified in 1891 that occupied the same area as present-day Malawi: it was renamed Nyasaland in 1907. British interest in the area arose from visits made by David Livingstone from 1858 onward during his exploration of the Zambezi area. This encouraged missionary activity that started in the 1860s, undertaken by the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland, and which was followed by a small number of settlers. The Portuguese government attempted to claim much of the area in which the missionaries and settlers operated, but this was disputed by the British government. To forestall a Portuguese expedition claiming effective occupation, a protectorate was proclaimed, first over the south of this area, then over the whole of it in 1889. After negotiations with the Portuguese and German governments on its boundaries, the protectorate was formally ratified by the British government in May 1891.
Sir Henry Hamilton Johnston, known as Harry Johnston, was a British explorer, botanist, artist, colonial administrator, and linguist who travelled widely in Africa and spoke many African languages. He published 40 books on African subjects and was one of the key players in the Scramble for Africa that occurred at the end of the 19th century.
The Shire Highlands are a plateau in southern Malawi, located east of the Shire River. It is a major agricultural area and the most densely populated part of the country.
Maravi was a kingdom which straddled the current borders of Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, in the 16th century. The present-day name "Maláŵi" is said to derive from the Chewa word "malaŵí", which means "flames". "Maravi" is a general name of the peoples of Malawi, eastern Zambia, and northeastern Mozambique. The Chewa language, which is also referred to as Nyanja, Chinyanja or Chichewa, and is spoken in southern and central Malawi, in Zambia and to some extent in Mozambique, is the main language that emerged from this empire.
Alexandre Alberto da Rocha de Serpa Pinto, Viscount of Serpa Pinto was a Portuguese explorer of southern Africa and a colonial administrator.
The geography of North Africa has been reasonably well known among Europeans since classical antiquity in Greco-Roman geography. Northwest Africa was known as either Libya or Africa, while Egypt was considered part of Asia.
The 1890 British Ultimatum was an ultimatum by the British government delivered on 11 January 1890 to the Kingdom of Portugal. The ultimatum forced the retreat of Portuguese military forces from areas which had been claimed by Portugal on the basis of historical discovery and recent exploration, but which the United Kingdom claimed on the basis of effective occupation. Portugal had attempted to claim a large area of land between its colonies of Mozambique and Angola including most of present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia and a large part of Malawi, which had been included in Portugal's "Rose-coloured Map".
The Pink Map, also known in English as the Rose-Coloured Map, was a map prepared in 1885 to represent Portugal's claim of sovereignty over a land corridor connecting their colonies of Angola and Mozambique during the Scramble for Africa. The area claimed included most of what is currently Zimbabwe and large parts of modern Zambia and Malawi. In the first half of the 19th century, Portugal fully controlled only a few coastal towns in Angola and Mozambique. It also claimed suzerainty over other almost independent towns and nominally Portuguese subjects in the Zambezi valley, but could rarely enforce its claims; most of the territory now within Angola and Mozambique was entirely independent of Portuguese control. Between 1840 and 1869, Portugal expanded the area it controlled but felt threatened by the activities of other powers.
James Chuma and Abdullah Susi were people from central Africa who took part in the second Zambesi expedition led by the explorer David Livingstone, and were employed by him in his last expedition. They had significant roles in organisation, and were the first to greet Stanley when his search party made contact.
Henry Adrian Churchill CB was an archaeological explorer of ancient Mesopotamia and a British diplomat who stopped much of the commercial slavery in Zanzibar and helped prevent a war between Zanzibar and Oman.
Ahmed Yusuf Mahamud was a Somali ruler. He was the fourth Sultan of the Geledi sultanate, reigning from 1848 to 1878 and succeeded his father Yusuf Mahamud after his demise at the battle of Adaddey Suleyman. Ahmed's rule marked a period of great prosperity in the Sultanate and with his death in 1878 the Geledi decline began.the sultan was credited as having brought over 20,000 Somali troops to free the slaves of zanzibar.
The Universities' Mission to Central Africa was a missionary society established by members of the Anglican Church within the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, and Dublin. It was firmly in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church, and the first to devolve authority to a bishop in the field rather than to a home committee. Founded in response to a plea by David Livingstone, the society established the mission stations that grew to be the bishoprics of Zanzibar and Nyasaland, and pioneered the training of black African priests.
James Frederic Elton (1840–1877) was an English explorer in Africa.
The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1891 was an agreement between Great Britain and Portugal which fixed the boundaries between the British Central Africa Protectorate, and the territories administered by the British South Africa Company in Mashonaland and Matabeleland and North-Western Rhodesia and Portuguese Mozambique, and also between the British South Africa Company administered territories of North-Eastern Rhodesia, and Portuguese Angola.
John Buchanan (1855–1896), was a Scottish horticulturist who went to Central Africa, now Malawi, in 1876 as a lay member of the missionary party that established Blantyre Mission. Buchanan came to Central Africa as an ambitious artisan: his character was described as dour and devout but also as restlessly ambitious, and he saw in Central Africa a gateway to personal achievement. He started a mission farm on the site of Zomba, Malawi but was dismissed from the mission in 1881 for brutality. From being a disgraced missionary, Buchanan first became a very influential planter owning, with his brothers, extensive estates in Zomba District. He then achieved the highest position he could in the British administration as Acting British Consul to Central Africa from 1887 to 1891. In that capacity declared a protectorate over the Shire Highlands in 1889 to pre-empt a Portuguese expedition that intended to claim sovereignty over that region. In 1891, the Shire Highlands became part of the British Central Africa Protectorate. John Buchanan died at Chinde in Mozambique in March 1896 on his way to visit Scotland, and his estates were later acquired by the Blantyre and East Africa Ltd.
Horace Waller (1833–1896) was an English anti-slavery activist, missionary and clergyman. He was known as a writer on Africa, evangelical Christian, close associate of David Livingstone and others involved in central and east African mission and exploration work, and advocate of British imperial expansion.
The British explorer and Arabist Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) published over 40 books and countless articles, monographs and letters. Most of Burton's books are travel narratives or translations. His only works of original imaginative fiction are both in verse: Stone Talk (1865) and the well-known The Kasidah (1880), both of which he published under the pseudonym "Frank Baker".
The Makololo chiefs recognised by the governments of colonial Nyasaland and independent Malawi have their origin in a group of porters that David Livingstone brought from Barotseland in the 1850s to support his first Zambezi expedition that did not return to Barotseland but assisted Livingstone and British missionaries in the area of southern Malawi between 1859 and 1864. After the withdrawal of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa those Makololo remaining in the Shire valley used firearms provided by the Europeans to attract dependants seeking protection, to seize land and to establish a number of chieftainships. At the time that a British protectorate was established in 1891, there were seven Makololo chiefs of which six were recognised by the government. Five survived to be given local governmental powers in 1933, and these powers continued after Malawi became independent. Although called Makololo or Kololo, after the ruling group in Barotseland in the 1850s, the majority came from peoples subject to the Makololo who adopted the more prestigious name. As, regardless of their origin, they took wives from among the inhabitants of the Shire Valley, their modern descendants have little connection with the Kololo people apart from their name.
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