Experts shed light on David Livingstone massacre diary

BBC ^ | November 1, 2011

[decimon]

A diary written 140 years ago by Scots explorer David Livingstone can now be read for the first time after experts shed new light on the badly-faded text.

Scientists used spectral imaging to recover the account of the massacre of 400 slaves, which had been written on old newspaper with makeshift ink.

The manuscript, written in central Africa, deteriorated rapidly and is now virtually invisible to the naked eye.

It has gone on show at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.

An international team of experts took part in the 18-month project to uncover Livingstone's personal account of the "unspeakable horror" of the slave trade.

The process involved illuminating the manuscript with successive wavelengths of light. They started with ultraviolet before working through the visible spectrum, ending with infrared.

Processed digital images then enhanced the text.

The pages came from the David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre, which is run by the National Trust for Scotland.

When he wrote the diary, Livingstone had been forgotten by the public and was stranded without supplies in Central Africa.

He was forced to make ink from berry seeds and wrote over the pages of a single copy of the London Standard.

[decimon]

Berry ink the past ping.

[icwhatudo]

Livingstone's diary records him gazing with "wonder" as three Arab slavers with guns entered the market in Nyangwe, a Congolese village where 1,500 people were gathered - most of them women.

He wrote: "50 yards off two guns were fired and a general flight took place - shot after shot followed on the terrified fugitives - great numbers died. It is awful - terrible, a dreadful world this.

Muslim enslavement of blacks in Africa continues to this day.

[vanilla swirl]

Obama’s ancestry is more Arab than black. Traceing his lineage might prove interesting.

[wolficatZ]

Suprised the BBC even used the word “Arab”.

[Savage Beast]

"report of the deaths forced the British government to close the East Africa slave trade."

The slave trade was indeed an "unspeakable horror"!

And SLAVERY continues in the 21st century in some parts of Africa and Asia. Those who want to help stop it should contact the American Anti-Slavery Group: http://www.iabolish.org/, of which I am a member, I am proud to say.

When Jeremiah Wright said:

"We know all about white Christians! They didn't have any problem with selling little children away from their parents..." etc.

he was dead wrong!

White Christians had a BIG PROBLEM with slavery!

A PROBLEM so BIG that they ABOLISHED it--more than a century ago--and, in America, they fought the bloodiest war in American history to abolish it!

Not so in Africa and Asia--where the unspeakably horror of institution of slavery is alive and well!

[SunkenCiv]

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Thanks decimon. I come not to praise but toe berry ink. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.