Du Cap de Bonne Espérance: "From the Cape of Good Hope to Victoria Nyanza” by Louis Jalla (1905)

This book, Du Cap de Bonne Espérance au Victoria Nyanza: Notes de Voyage ("From the Cape of Good Hope to Victoria Nyanza: Travel Notes"), published in Florence in 1905, is an extraordinary window into the history of the Barotseland Mission and the complex networks of European missionary exploration.

The Italian Core of a French Mission

The author, Louis Jalla (pictured on the frontispiece), along with his more famous brother Adolphe Jalla, were prominent figures in the Société des missions évangéliques de Paris (Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, or PEMS).

Though serving under a French society, the Jalla brothers were actually Waldensians from the Piedmont region of northern Italy. The Waldensians were a historic Proto-Protestant movement dating back to the Middle Ages who had faced centuries of persecution in Italy. Once they achieved religious freedom in 1848, many Waldensian pastors brought their intense evangelical fervor to the global mission field. This explains why a book detailing a journey under a French mission through British territories in Africa was printed in French but published in Florence by the Protestant Waldensian press, Imprimerie Claudienne.

Eyewitnesses to King Lewanika's Barotseland

Louis Jalla arrived in the upper Zambezi valley (modern-day western Zambia) in the late 1880s. He became an intimate observer and diplomat at the court of King Lewanika, the Litunga (king) of the Lozi people.

The period covered by Jalla's notes was highly volatile. King Lewanika was navigating intense pressure from the British South Africa Company (BSAC), led by Cecil Rhodes. The PEMS missionaries played a monumental role as advisors to Lewanika, ultimately influencing his decision to sign the Lochner Concession in 1890, which turned Barotseland into a British protectorate rather than a directly colonized, company-ruled territory.

Chronicling a Transcontinental Transition

Published in 1905, this volume captures the twilight of the "pioneer" missionary era and the dawn of modern colonial infrastructure. Jalla's travel notes trace the vast, sweeping route from the Cape of Good Hope all the way up to Lake Victoria (Victoria Nyanza). It documents an Africa in rapid transition—moving from the grueling ox-wagon treks and dugout canoe expeditions of the 19th century to the introduction of steamships, telegraph lines, and the rapid advance of the Rhodesian railway system.

250mm x 850mm

Fragile papers wrappers; foxed.

R850