Africa miscellanea

Sir James Ronald Leslie Macdonald (1862-1927) was born on 8 February 1862 in Aberdeen. He attended the grammar school and university in Aberdeen before joining the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was gazetted to the Royal Engineers in 1882, and was attached to the Military Works Department in India, 1885-1891. In 1891 he was appointed Chief Engineer on the preliminary survey for the projected Uganda Railway between Mombasa and Lake Victoria Nyanza. Macdonald became Acting Commissioner of the Uganda in 1893, and commanded a British exploring expedition in East Africa, 1897-1899, which successfully engaged mutineers and rebels. He was appointed Director of Balloons, and subsequently of Railways, for the China expeditionary force in 1900, and was the general officer commanding in Mauritius, 1900-1912. He died on 27 June 1927 in Bournemouth.

Sir John Wallace Pringle (1863-1938) was part of the Burmese Expedition, 1885-1886, and the Uganda Railway Survey, 1891-1892. He was Chief Inspecting Officer at the Ministry of Transport from 1916 until his retirement in 1929. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and was knighted in 1925. He died on 16 July 1938.

Typescript copies by A.T. Matson of the diaries of Sir James Macdonald and Sir John Pringle, 1891-1892.

Bequeathed by H.B. Thomas, 1971.

Donald H. Simpson, ed., 'The manuscript catalogue of the library of the Royal Commonwealth Society' (London, 1975), pp. 107-108. Indexed

The original diaries are kept at Rhodes House Library, Oxford, where they were deposited under the Oxford University Colonial Records Project.