Kirk, John (1832–1922)

Scottish administrator, physician, and naturalist. As British consul in Zanzibar during the 1870s, he was responsible for persuading the Sultan of Zanzibar to outlaw the slave trade to Arabia, thus terminating one of the last outposts of African slavery.

Kirk served as a doctor in the Crimean War, and then accompanied David Livingstone on his second expedition into the African interior in 1858. On this journey, he became one of the first four white men to see Lake Nyasa (on 16 September 1859); his name lives on in the Kirk Range, west of the Shire river in Zambia. Kirk retired from the consular service in 1887, but continued to advise the British government on African affairs. His extensive collections of botanical specimens on his travels allowed him to compile The Flora of Tropical Africa, 1868–1917.