Eviscerating Dr. Livingstone: African Understandings of Western Burial Needs, 1871–72

In 1872, after meeting Dr. Livingstone beside Lake Tanganyika, famed explorer Henry Morton Stanley travelled back to Zanzibar to organize a new caravan to resupply the aging and ailing Scottish missionary. Only a few months later, however, Livingstone was dying, surrounded by longtime African companions, as well as scouts and porters that Stanley had left him. This paper shall focus on the ensuing transport of Dr Livingstone’s dead body back to England. It will explore African understandings about European burial needs and habits, as well as the specific requirements imposed by Livingstone’s scientific personality and
international reputation as a kind of secular apostle.
Livingstone’s body and its later translation to its final burial place in Westminster Abbey was the result of choices and understandings framed by his last African companions. More specifically, this paper will examine how a close group of Swahili prepared and re-shaped the dead body in order to fit western needs, as well as their moral obligations and travelling demands. More broadly, this specific story sheds light on how, in the colonial era, dead bodies came to fit into increasing transnational flows. It questions how our current sensitivity and respect for human bodies may impact our historical reconstitution of such flows and transcontinental emotions.