King Leopold’s Ghost

The first Englishman to travel far up the Congo River was John Rowlands. Rowlands was born into a poor Welsh family, and his parents weren’t married—a major taboo at the time. He grew up in a workhouse, where he, like other young unwanted children, was forced to work in a factory. In spite of the harsh living conditions, Rowlands distinguished himself as a student in his Sunday school classes. At the age of 15, he left the workhouse and became a sailor aboard a merchant ship traveling to Louisiana. He lived in New Orleans for many years, working for a cotton factor (a kind of businessman who specialized in selling Southern cotton to international buyers). Around the time he turned 18, he gave himself a new name: Henry Morton Stanley. Throughout his adult life, Stanley distorted the details of his early life, sometimes presenting himself as heroic leader who led a mutiny in his workhouse (despite all the evidence that nothing of the kind ever happened). One detail about Stanley’s life is clear, however—he was confused and intimidated by women, and seems not to have had any sexual experience with them.

Stanley fought as a Confederate in the Civil War, but switched to the Union side after being captured. Later, his good memory and penmanship led him to a position aboard the frigate Minnesota. After the war, he lived in St. Louis and became a successful newspaperman. He traveled to India to report uprisings against the British Empire, and later covered the Abyssinian War, which was the “scoop” that made him successful. By the time he was 27, Stanley was a regular foreign correspondent for the New York Herald, one of America’s most popular newspapers. While stationed in London for the Herald, Stanley learned about the so-called “Scramble for Africa”—the competition between the European powers to colonize the interior of the African continent. At the time when Stanley was writing for the Herald, African exploration was a subject of great fascination for Europeans and Americans. Indeed, some of the first truly international celebrities were African explorers. Africa fascinated European politicians, too, because African represented a source for resources that could feed the Industrial Revolution: rubber, metal, and slaves.

By the middle of the 19th century, many European countries, including Britain and France, had abolished slavery. However, they had only done so after many hundreds of years of using slavery to build up their own empires. For the most part, British and French anti-slavery leaders didn’t use their influence to denounce European countries that practiced slavery; instead, they directed their furor at “safe” non-Western targets, such as the slave traders of the Arabian peninsula. Furthermore, many anti-slavery activists in Britain and France continued to believe that European countries had the right to colonize Africa and farm the land for raw materials. Many of these activists were pious Christians who believed that European explorers had a duty to spread the gospel to Africa, even as they extracted rubber, ivory, and gold from the continent.

In many ways, the life of the explorer David Livingstone exemplifies the complex British attitude toward Africa in the mid-19th century. Livingstone was Christian, hated slavery, yet believed in Britain’s right to claim raw materials from Africa. Livingstone explored many different areas of the African continent, preaching Christian doctrine wherever he went and becoming a national hero in the process. In 1866, Livingstone went missing in the midst of an expedition, prompting an international investigation. The New York Herald sent Stanley to Africa to find Livingstone. Over the next four years, Stanley, a savvy self-promoter, traveled south from Zanzibar, sending dramatic telegraph cables about his exciting expedition to find Livingstone. In private, Stanley sent other telegrams to a young Welsh woman he’d been wooing. At the end of his journey, Stanley claims to have greeted Livingstone with the famous words, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” The story of Stanley’s journey to find Livingstone quickly became a legend.

Stanley’s account of the Livingstone expedition is revealing in the frank way he talks about Africans. He describes how he and his soldiers flogged Africans for deserting the expedition, and notes, again and again, that Africa was largely empty (“unpeopled”) and ripe for European colonization. Although Stanley’s accounts of the expedition were popular in France and America, he was disliked in Britain for being a “working-class Welshman,” and not a “real English gentleman.” Stanley was greatly disappointed by his reception in England; additionally, the young Welsh woman with whom he’d communicated throughout his time in Africa married someone else. Furious, Stanley resolved to return to Africa.