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AFRICA THROUGH WESTERN EYES

Part 4: Papers of Sir John Kirk (1832-1922) from the National Library of Scotland

Africa Through Western Eyes brings together a wide selection of sources for the study of life and culture in Africa, concentrating on the papers of British explorers, soldiers, colonisers, traders and missionaries. Parts 1 and 2 are based on the holdings of the Royal Commonwealth Society Library and Parts 3 and 4 are sourced from the rich holdings of the National Library of Scotland. Part 3 contains papers of David Livingstone, Robert Moffat and Mungo Park.

Part 4 is entirely devoted to the papers of Sir John Kirk (1832-1922) including some letters of his wife, Lady Helen Kirk. Sir John Kirk was David Livingstone’s chief assistant on the Second Zambesi Expedition, 1858-1863. He was a physician, an accomplished botanist and zoologist. His surviving expedition notes and photographs form a unique record of the expedition with Livingstone. The other fascinating letters, notes and photographs in the Kirk collection vividly document his twenty years as British Consul in Zanzibar, his relationship with the Sultan, his work in abolishing the Slave Trade there and his negotiations with the Germans regarding the formation of German East Africa. (now Tanzania).

The papers are divided into the following parts:

Correspondence

  • with David Livingstone, covering his time on the Zambesi, at Newstead Abbey, in Bombay and in Eastern Africa, 1858-1870, 1872, 1873
  • from key figures in Zanzibar such as Captain W F Prideaux (Acting Consul General), Lloyd Matthews (Consul General) and Sir Bartle Frere
  • from political figures in Britain such as Lord Dufferin, Lord Granville, Lord Northbrook, Lord Rosebery and Lord Salisbury, Sir A E Havelock, H H Kitchener, Lord Lothian, Charles Dilke, 1875-1892
  • with H W Wylde, Head of the Slave Trade Department at the Foreign Office, 1868-1886 and with Charles Allen, Secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, detailing aspects of life in Zanzibar and of the slave trade, 1882-1899
  • from explorers and anti-slavery campaigners such as Sir Richard Burton, J Chamberlain, F Fowell- Buxton, J D Hooker, H M Stanley, Verney Lovett Cameron, Sir Harry J Johnston, 1867-1900
  • from King Leopold II of the Belgians regarding Belgian relations with Zanzibar, 1879-1892
  • with the Imperial British East Africa Company and the British and International Freeland Association, 1893-1894
  • with the Sultan of Zanzibar and Hamed Bin Muhammed, a prosperous ivory and slave trader, 1856-1902, 1905
  • with Frederick D Lugard regarding the conduct of the Imperial British East Africa Company in Uganda
  • with Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society, 1867-1871
  • with Kirk’s wife, Helen and daughter and his brother, Alick

Also included are:

  • Kirk’s Administration Report of the Political Agency in Zanzibar, 1870
  • notes by Kirk on slave porters and memos and reports on the slave trade and the Slave Trade Treaty with Zanzibar, 1873
  • records of Kirk’s texts of telegrams sent and received at Zanzibar, covering topics such as the murder of Anglican Bishop Hannington and the creation of German East Africa (Tanzania), 1884-1886

Diaries and Notebooks

  • Kirk’s notebooks containing botanical, barometric and meterological observations with sketches and narrative accounts, compiled on the Zambesi Expedition, 1858, 1860-1861
  • notebooks containing notes and statistics on the slave trade, his relationship with the Sultan, visits to places such as Tanga, Merca, Geledi, Brava, Dar-es-Salaam, Msasani Bay and Formosa Bay compiled while in Zanzibar, 1866-1873, 1875-1884
  • typescript transcripts of Kirk’s Zanzibar diaries, 1866-1875
  • diary of Helen Kirk (his wife), 1867-1869, 1877 while in Zanzibar describing visitors, visits to Lamu and Mombasa and Kirk’s various trips

Photographs

  • taken by Kirk while on the Zambesi Expedition, 1858-1863 with subjects including island vegetation, boats, houses, local hairstyles, weapons and local objects
  • taken while in Zanzibar, 1866-1888, covering vessels, wood carvings, Kirk’s country residence, island vegetation, local dress, scenes on the African coast, Swahili tombs, the British Agency at Zanzibar, Vice-Consul Haggard and his household at Lamu, Sayyid Barghash and his entourage, the British Consulate building
  • taken while in West Africa and Cornwall, 1895-1897
  • copies of photographs taken by Kirk called the “Crimean War” album covering places such as Rome and Constantinople
  • of the Kirk family, 1870-1915

Also included are sketches by Kirk during the Zambesi Expedition, 1858-1863.

Printed Material

  • albums of news cuttings collected by Kirk, 1871-1874, 1885-1932 covering the East African slave trade, the controversy over the shipment of supplies to Livingstone, Sir Bartle Frere’s Special Mission to Zanzibar, an interview with Kirk
  • loose news cuttings, 1858-1922, 1929, 1932, 1959, 1973 covering the Zambesi expedition, Livingstone’s other explorations, the German involvement in East Africa, Kirk’s life and obituaries of Kirk and his wife
  • published material by Kirk with many illustrations on the natural history of East Africa, relating mostly to flora and fauna made known outside Africa by Kirk c1864-1960


Biographical note on Sir John Kirk

Sir John Kirk was born in the parish of Barry in Angus, the son of the local minister, John Kirk who passed on his love of botany to his son.

Sir John Kirk graduated from Edinburgh University with a medical degree in 1854 and shortly afterwards took up his first post as a physician at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. He volunteered for medical work in the Crimean War and while there managed to pursue his botanical interests and his love of photography.

On his return from the Crimea he was invited by David Livingstone to join his
government-funded Zambesi expedition. However the expedition from 1858 to 1863 turned out to be a spectacular failure. The Zambesi could not be navigated easily due to seasonal shallows and impassable rapids and there were problems with the steamboats and the personnel. Kirk had a narrow escape when his canoe capsized in the Kebrabassa rapids on the Shire river in 1860 and was unfortunate to lose many of his journals and specimens. Livingstone’s wife, Mary, died soon after of malaria at Shupanga in 1862.

Notwithstanding all these problems, Kirk was able to send home many botanical and zoological specimens which were to lay the foundations for his book The Flora and Fauna of Tropical Africa which was published in instalments from 1868 to 1917. Also of major importance were the maps Kirk made of the African interior, previously only explored by Portuguese officials and traders.

After Livingstone’s return to Britain in 1864, he kept in touch with Kirk and helped to further his career by lobbying influential friends for a consular post for Kirk. He managed to persuade the Governor of Bombay who had the patronage of the Zanzibar consulate to appoint Kirk as medical officer. Soon after his appointment he was made Vice-Consul in 1866. He married his wife Helen Cooke in 1867 in Zanzibar and she remained there until 1883, assisting him with his correspondence. By 1868 he was Assistant Political Agent, then in 1873 Consul-General and finally Agent and Consul-General in 1880.

The year Kirk arrived in Zanzibar, Livingstone returned to Africa for the last of his great expeditions, to find the sources of the Nile and the Congo rivers. Kirk was at the end of the explorer’s supply route to Ujiji but problems were caused when supplies were lost or stolen and Henry Morton Stanley blamed Kirk. The British press were of the same opinion and a furore developed in which accusations of negligence were aimed at Kirk. An official investigation followed and Kirk was cleared of all blame.

The life of the Sultanate of Zanzibar was centred round ivory, slaves and cloves. Kirk did his utmost to tackle the slavery problem by forming a good relationship with Sultan Seyyid Barghash, reinforced by medical attendance on his family. The Sultan had not made any attempt to prevent slaves being shipped into Zanzibar but by 1873 pressure to stop this happening was intense with the threat of a British naval blockade if a treaty was not signed. It was Kirk who managed to persuade the Sultan to sign the treaty but although the great slave market was closed, smuggling of slaves continued and in 1876 Kirk persuaded the Sultan to impose stronger measures against slavers. Kirk was known as the great ‘Belozi’ in Swahili (Consul). When time allowed he continued his botanical researches and photography and around three hundred photographs of the people and places in Zanzibar are to be found in his papers.

From 1885 until 1887, when Kirk left Zanzibar, he found himself in a new political game with Germany who had plans for West Africa. The British Government was not averse to these and Kirk had to explain to the Sultan that her desires for an inland protectorate should be approved. His defence of the Sultan’s interest aroused the disapproval of Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister who wanted to promote Anglo-German friendship. The telegrams which passed between him and the Foreign Office for this period are preserved in his personal files and provide a fascinating record of the partition of Africa at this period in history. When Kirk left Zanzibar in 1887 her territories were confined to the islands and a small coastal strip. He had however persuaded the Sultan to give concessions on the Mombasa coast of what is now Kenya, to William Mackinnon’s East African Association, which in 1888 became the Imperial British East Africa Company.

Kirk’s retirement did not end his involvement with Africa and he continued to play an important part in the imperialist movement in Britain. He was British delegate to the Brussels African Slave Trade Conference in 1889-1890, and in 1895 conducted an enquiry into the Brass River conflicts in Nigeria. He was also a Director of the Imperial British East Africa Company and chairman of the government committee for the construction of the Uganda Railway.

The Kirk papers are an indispensable source for African history with material for anthropology, cultural history, mission history, imperial history and the study of slavery, exploration and racism.



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