John Kirk (explorer)

John Kirk, retired
John Kirk

Sir John Kirk, GCMG, KCB, FRS (19 December 1832 – 15 January 1922) was a Scottish physician, naturalist, companion to explorer David Livingstone, and British administrator in Zanzibar. He was born in Barry, Angus, near Arbroath, Scotland and is buried in St. Nicholas's churchyard in Sevenoaks, Kent, England. He earned his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh. He was a keen botanist throughout his life and was highly regarded by successive directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: William Hooker, Joseph Dalton Hooker and William Turner Thiselton-Dyer.

Career

After the death of Livingstone, Kirk pledged to continue Livingston's work to end the East African slave trade. For years he negotiated with the ruler of Zanzibar, Sultan Bargash, gaining his confidence and promising to help enrich the East African domain through legitimate commerce.

In June 1873 Kirk was acting British Consul and received simultaneous contradictory instructions from London on the Zanzibar slave trade, one to issue an ultimatum to the Sultan 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.[1] By 1885 the region was larger and more profitable.

In 1882 he was awarded the Patron's Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his achievements.[2]

He succeeded Henry Adrian Churchill as British Consul in Zanzibar, after Churchill died in office in 1886.[3]

Family

Kirk had a daughter, Helen, who 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 had a son Colonel John William Carnegie Kirk author of A British Garden Flora. The engineer, Alexander Carnegie Kirk, was John Kirk's elder brother.

Eponyms

Kirk's red colobus of Zanzibar, Procolobus kirkii, taken at Jozani Forest, Zanzibar, Tanzania.

According to sources,[4] Kirk first drew zoologists' attention to the Zanzibar red colobus,[5] 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 honor,[6] as is a species of African amphibian, Kirk's caecilian (Scolecomorphus kirkii).[7]

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Christopher Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade: The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century, 1968, pp 264-268
  2. ↑ "List of Past Gold Medal Winners" (PDF). Royal Geographical Society. Retrieved 24 August 2015.
  3. ↑ Zanzibar History
  4. ↑ Kirk's red colobus, Procolobus kirkii
  5. ↑ Inventory Acc.942 Papers of Sir John Kirk GCMB KCB and Lady Kirk née Helen Cooke. National Library of Scotland: Manuscripts Division.
  6. ↑ Beolens B, Watkins M, Grayson M. 2011. The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. ("Kirk", p. 142).
  7. ↑ Bo Beolens; Michael Watkins; Michael Grayson (22 April 2013). The Eponym Dictionary of Amphibians. Pelagic Publishing. p. 186. ISBN 978-1-907807-42-8.
  8. ↑ IPNI.  J.Kirk.

Further reading

External links

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