One More Voice publishes a selection of critically-edited and encoded archival texts (manuscripts and periodical press articles) alongside a set of curated historical objects. Each edited text and object is presented in a form ready for educational use, as noted on our home page. Additionally, the project helps contextualize these primary materials by providing an extended list of Victorian-era, book-length published works by non-European authors (mostly Anglophone) and a small collection of relevant motion pictures.
The archival texts are available for viewing online in facsimile versions that approximate the textual, structural, and material characteristics of the originals. This strategy of representation underscores the fact that these are archival materials, but also seeks to establish some degree of continuity between the originals and their digital surrogates.
Each entry below provides dates for the non-European individual of interest, a link to the corresponding Wikipedia entry (if available), a short biographical statement, links to one or more relevant archival items published by One More Voice, and, for these items, the names of any British or other European co-creators and information on the material format of the item, including description of any layers of third-party remediation involved in the item's production.
Users can also download relevant TEI XML files (and related XSL and CSS files) for all critically-edited archival texts from the One More VoiceGitHub repo. If you use our critical editions in your own work, please credit our project as appropriate by using the citation template provided at the end of each item page.
Biography: Formerly enslaved person and traveler from Kordofan, Sudan; accompanied British explorer Richard Burton as a valet on various West African journeys in the 1860s; produced accounts of his life and travels.
Biography: Swahili trader and formerly enslaved person; traveled widely in nineteenth-century East and Central Africa; although known for the violence of his followers, notably assisted explorer David Livingstone during the latter's final travels in Africa (1866-73).
Biography: Gonaqua Khoe and appointed colonial official in South Africa's Kat River Settlement; served with British and Cape colonial forces against the amaXhosa in Hintsa's War (1834-35) and the War of the Axe (1846-47).
Biography: Traveler from the Yao of East Africa; formerly enslaved person who accompanied explorer David Livingstone on his final travels (1866-73); provided Horace Waller, editor of Livingstone's posthumous journals, with information related to those travels.
Format: Original letter, as edited and published (alongside a letter by another British author) in a letter by a British abolitionist in a British periodical
Biography: Abolitionist and civil rights activist; drew on his skills as a writer and orator and on his story as a formerly enslaved person to become one of the most renowned and politically influential Black Americans of the nineteenth century.
Biography: Chinese-Canadian author and journalist; daughter of a formerly enslaved Chinese mother and a British father; sister of recognized author Onoto Watanna; wrote widely, with her work focused on exploring and documenting the Chinese experience in North America.
Biography: Traveler from the Yao of East Africa; accompanied explorer David Livingstone during the last two years (1872-73) of the latter's final African journey.
Biography: Served as the chief minister (Katikiro) of Buganda (now part of Uganda) for over thirty years; also a prominent intellectual, ethnographer, and author.
Biography: Queen or queen mother (“mohumagadi”) of the BaNgwato people of the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana); played a regional key role in promoting Christianity, advocating for temperance and women's education, and expanding the role of women in the church.
Biography: (Lief) Arab trader who traveled in nineteenth-century East Africa. (Wogga) African traveler and a formerly enslaved person who traveled in nineteenth-century West Africa.
Biography: King of Kings and Emperor of Ethiopia (1889-1913), a role in which he expanded Ethiopia's territory and engaged in large-scale modernization in the areas of economy, education, communication, and transportation; the defeat of Italian forces by his army at the Battle of Adwa (1896) marked a key milestone in the history of African resistance to European colonialism and led Italy and other European nations to recognize Ethiopia's independence.
Co-Creator(s): Edward VII; John Lane Harrington; Federico Ciccodicola; Victor Emmanuel III
Format: Treaty drafted with British and Italian representatives and signed in Ethiopia, as as edited by two British individuals and published in a book by a British publisher
(Moshoeshoe) c.1786-1870 • Wikipedia | (Nehemiah) Dates unknown
Biography: (Moshoeshoe) Son of a minor chief of the Koena clan of Southern Africa's Basotho people; rose to prominence as a strategic leader, diplomat, and military tactician; became the first king of Basutoland (modern-day Lesotho) in 1822. (Nehemiah) Moshoeshoe's son.
Co-Creator(s): Anonymous; Jacobus Nicolaas Boshoff; Thomas Arbousset; George Grey
Format: Discussion with Dutch South African interlocutor and a British colonial official, as translated by a French interpreter and as edited and published in a British periodical
Format: Funeral proclamation, as read by an anonymous representative and as transcribed, translated, and published as part of an obituary by a British writer in a British periodical
Biography: Eldest son of prominent London Missionary Society missionary James Read, Sr., and close associate of Jan Tzatzoe; missionary and evangelical campaigner in the Cape Colony; vocal activist for Khoe civil rights and an influential figure in the establishment of schooling in South Africa's Kat River Settlement.
Co-Creator(s): [Unnamed Arab and African Informants?]; David Livingstone
Format: Headman list and narrative data, as translated (possibly with the help of an intermediary) and written down in a notebook by a British explorer
Biography: Leader of the BaKwena in southern Africa; played a key regional role in extending commercial routes, spreading Christianity, and forming the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
Dates(s): 7 May 1853, 11 May 1853; 21 April 1853, 30 April 1853; 1 December 1852.
Co-Creator(s): Samuel Edwards; Tom Thompson; Anonymous; William F. Webb
Format: Statement with two original signatures, as translated and written down by a British individual and as attested by another British individual; also appended: published version of same statement with an additional letter from a British hunter provided for context
Biography: (NoSuthu Soga Jotelo) Great Wife of Soga, counsellor to Ngqika (leader of the AmaGcaleka Xhosa); mother of six children, including the Rev. Tiyo Soga (ordained missionary of the United Presbyterian Church); after her conversion to Christianity, lived in the Tyumi Valley at the Glasgow African Missionary Station run by Rev. William Chalmers. (Tause) Daughter of NoSuthu.
Format: Original letter (NoSuthu Soga Jotelo) as dictated (to Tause), then conveyed to and translated by a British missionary and published as part of an essay in a British missionary periodical
Biography: First ordained Xhosa missionary to the Xhosa people in South Africa; educated at Glasgow University and ordained in the United Presbyterian Church; penned newspaper articles, letters, reports, and translations of The Pilgrim’s Progress and the Bible into Xhosa.
Biography: Arab-African ivory and slave trader who traveled widely in nineteenth-century East and Central Africa; played a major role in shaping the history of the region; supported the work of explorers like David Livingstone and Henry M. Stanley; for a time served as Governor in the Stanley Falls District of the Congo Free State.
Format: Q&A with an anonymous interlocutor, as translated, written down, edited, contextualized, and published by an anonymous British writer in a British periodical
Biography: Also Dyani Tshatshu; Xhosa leader who became a prize African convert of the London Missionary Society; had close connections to its missionary James Read, Sr., and his son James Read, Jr.; worked as a missionary and evangelical-humanitarian campaigner in the Cape Colony and the neighboring Xhosa chieftaincies.
Biography: Traveler and explorer from the Yao of East Africa; accompanied explorer David Livingstone during the last two years (1872-73) of the latter's final African journey.
Biography: Most likely from Manyema (today a region in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo); assisted explorer David Livingstone during the latter's final travels in Africa (1866-73).
Biography: Conveyed their experiences of atrocities under Congo Free State officers and soldiers to Roger Casement, a British government official tasked with investigating Belgian-led conduct in the colony.
Format: Q&A with and statements by a series of unnamed individuals and groups from the Congo Free State, as conveyed by one or more unnamed translators from the Congo Free State to a British government officer and as edited for and published among official British government documents
Format: Statements by a series of unnamed individual from the Congo Free State, as conveyed by one or more unnamed translators from the Congo Free State to a British government officer and as edited for and published among official British government documents
Format: Statement by an unnamed individual from the Congo Free State, as conveyed by at least one unnamed translator from the Congo Free State to a British government officer and as edited for and published among official British government documents
Format: Q&A with a series of unnamed individuals from the Congo Free State, as conveyed by two unnamed translators from the Congo Free State to a British government officer and as edited for and published among official British government documents
![Tree segment with faded inscription on inner bark that begins “Dr. Livignston[e] / May 4, 18[73].”](site-images/liv_020014_0001_deriv-1020px.jpg "Detail from Weatherly Poulett and [Jacob Wainwright], “Dr. Livingstone, May 4 1873; Inscription Carved by African Youths on the Tree in Central Africa at the Foot of Which Livingstone’s Heart Was Buried” (Photograph, c.1895-1896), no. 561464i, Wellcome Library, London. Copyright Wellcome Library, London. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).")