European Exploration
The lake was known to Europeans from reports by chiefs such as Kazembe and from Swahili traders, and it was sometimes referred to as 'Lake Bemba' from the name of the dominant tribe. In 1868 explorer and missionary David Livingstone was the first European to see the lake at the north end of the Lake Chifunabuli section. He was taken by canoe as far as Mbabala Island. His last expedition a few years later foundered in the swamps and their maze of shifting channels as he struggled to discover the rivers draining in and out of the lake. He died in 1873 in Chief Chitambo's village on the edge of the southern flood plain, about 100 km from the lake itself. The spot is marked by the Livingstone Memorial (see map).
It was a desire for the riches of Bangweulu's fisheries and game-rich floodplain which motivated King Leopold II of Belgium to insist, in border negotiations between his Congo Free State and the British in Northern Rhodesia, on a land corridor reaching Bangweulu from Katanga. This resulted in the shape of the Congo Pedicle (34) which, as it turned out, does not penetrate the area enough to be of the desired value.
The first Christian missions in Bangweulu were founded in the early 1900s under the authority of Bishop Joseph Dupont of the Catholic White Fathers who was based north of Kasama.
Read more about this topic: Lake Bangweulu
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