Henry Morton Stanley

British American explorer

• Born: January 28, 1841
• Birthplace: Denbigh, Denbighshire, Wales
• Died: May 10, 1904
• Place of death: London, England

Best known for finding the missionary explorer David Livingstone in 1871, Stanley was the first explorer to chart a number of the great lakes in Central Africa and to follow the Congo River to its mouth. His explorations opened much of Africa to European commerce and colonization.

Early Life

The illegitimate child of nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Perry, Henry Morton Stanley was born in Wales and was christened John Rowlands, thus receiving the same name as his probable father, a twenty-six-year-old farmer. At the age of four, he entered the local grammar school, but two years later he was placed in St. Asaph Union Workhouse, where he received most of his formal education.

Stanley applied himself diligently to his studies, exhibiting a trait that would endure throughout his life. Though he was a man of action who could act impetuously, his successes in Africa owed much to the care with which he prepared his expeditions. A journalist who visited Stanley’s apartment in 1874 noted that “the chairs, tables, sofas and settees, nay even the very floor itself—are laden with books, newspapers, manuscripts and maps” over which Stanley pored until late every night, making careful notes about weather, topography, and needed supplies.

Stanley also demonstrated his penchant for rashness at St. Asaph, for, according to his autobiography (1909), he ran away at the age of fifteen after knocking his teacher unconscious. He fled first to a cousin, Moses Owen, for whom he worked briefly as a teacher while receiving the last of his own classroom instruction. Owen’s mother disliked her nephew, so after nine months Stanley had to leave his post as student-tutor. Instead, he earned a precarious living as a shepherd and bartender at Treneirchion, Wales, before crossing the border to Liverpool. From this port, in December, 1858, he sailed as a cabin boy aboard the Windermere, bound for New Orleans.

After arriving in the United States, Stanley again ran away from a desperate situation, jumping ship even though he was a stranger without prospects for employment. Luck favored him, though, and he was adopted by a generous cotton broker, Henry Hope Stanley, whose name he took; the “Morton” was a later addition. After clerking in New Orleans and Cypress Bend, Arkansas, Stanley enlisted in the Arkansas Greys when the Civil War began. Captured by Union forces at the Battle of Shiloh in April, 1862, he shifted his allegiance rather than languish in a prison camp. This phase of his military career ended quickly when he received a medical discharge less than a month after joining an Illinois regiment. He would make one further attempt to serve, signing with the federal navy on July 19, 1864. After seeing action off the coast of North Carolina, he jumped ship on February 10, 1865; Stanley was apparently born to command but not to serve.

A perpetual victim of wanderlust, in June, 1865, Stanley agreed to work as a freelance writer for the MissouriDemocrat (in St. Louis) to report on the Coloradogold rush. Over the next two years, this love of travel would carry him from the American West to the Middle East and back to his native Denbigh before he returned to Missouri.

Life’s Work

Shortly after returning to the United States, Stanley seized an opportunity to travel once more. England was preparing to invade Abyssinia, and Stanley offered to cover the story for the New YorkHerald. Its owner, James Gordon Bennett, agreed—provided that Stanley would pay all of his own expenses. Stanley accepted these terms. Through bribery, skill, and luck, he was the first to report the British victory at the Battle of Magdala, thus securing a permanent spot on the staff of Bennett’s paper.

Two years later, Bennett selected his young European correspondent for the mission that would make Stanley’s name a household word and forever change the map of Africa. Dr. David Livingstone, missionary and geographer, had first gone to Africa in 1841. In 1866, he set out to find the source of the Nile River but soon disappeared. As concern for his safety mounted, Bennett asked Stanley to find and resupply the missing explorer.

Bennett’s concern, though, was more journalistic than humanitarian; he recognized what Stanley’s story would do for the circulation of the Herald. To be sure that the newspaper would have good copy regardless of the outcome of the rescue effort, Bennett first sent Stanley to cover the opening of the Suez Canal, on November 17, 1869, and to file a series of reports on the Middle East. Thus, Stanley could not begin his search for Livingstone until early 1871.

On November 10, 1871, after overcoming bad weather, disease, and hostile communities, Stanley found the man he was seeking, greeting him with the words that would soon echo throughout Europe and America: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Stanley had given the Herald its story, and he had saved Livingstone, whose supplies were almost exhausted and who was suffering from dysentery. Livingstone tried to persuade Stanley to join him in his quest for the source of the Nile, while Stanley argued that Livingstone should return to England. Neither convinced the other, but Stanley was clearly captivated by the missionary and by Africa. Even though he was eager to tell his story to the Western world, Stanley tarried at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika until March 14, 1872.

Back in London, Stanley described his life as a “whirl of cabs, soirées, dinners, dress-clothes and gloves.” He was added to Madame Tussaud’s waxworks; Queen Victoria sent him a jeweled snuffbox bearing the inscription:

Presented by Her Majesty, Queen Victoria to Henry Morton Stanley, Esq. in recognition of the prudence and zeal displayed by him in opening communication with Doctor Livingstone and thus relieving the general anxiety felt in regard to the fate of that distinguished Traveller.

The queen also granted Stanley an audience at Dunrobin Castle.

Not everyone was equally enthusiastic over Stanley’s achievement, particularly since he pointed out that neither the Royal Geographical Society nor the British government had done much to help Livingstone. Stanley was accused of fabricating the whole account and of forging the Livingstone letters and diary he brought back with him. In August, 1872, he bitterly described the treatment he had received from the Royal Geographical Society and the British upper classes:

First they would sneer at the fact of an American having gone to Central Africa—then they sneered at the idea of his being successful.… My story is called “sensational” and unreal etc. I assure you that I think after decently burying Livingstone in forgetfulness they hate to be told he is yet alive.

When Stanley offered to accompany the belatedly organized relief expedition under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society, he was rebuffed. Nevertheless, the society could not ignore the general sentiment concerning Stanley’s success, and on October 31, 1872, it reluctantly awarded him its highest honor, the Victoria Gold Medal.

In the midst of speeches, dinners, honors, and receptions, Stanley found time to write two books about his recent adventures, How I Found Livingstone (1872) and My Kalulu (1873). The latter, a fictionalized adventure tale for youngsters, did not do well, but How I Found Livingstone was an immense success, selling more than seventy thousand copies.

Finding and resupplying Livingstone had captured the popular imagination; as Sir Clements Robert Markham observed, however, “The fellow has done no geography.” The same could not be said of Stanley’s next expedition. On November 17, 1874, he plunged into the African jungle again, determined to cross the continent from east to west, locate the source of the Nile, and chart the unknown equatorial regions.

Such a feat offered great rewards and equally large challenges. The weather could be oppressively hot, and torrential rains could quickly turn a campsite into a sea of mud. The Africans who carried the supplies often proved unreliable; they would desert or, worse, mutiny. Dysentery, malaria, and typhus took a heavy toll: Stanley was the only white man in the party to survive the journey. Hostile tribes posed yet another danger; in a single battle at Vinyata, twenty-one people were killed by Nyaturu warriors. Within three months, Stanley had lost more than half of his original caravan.

The jungle exacted a price from Stanley himself also. In 1874 in London, he had weighed 178 pounds; since he was only five feet, five inches tall, his figure was portly. However, he carried himself with military erectness, and photographs show arching brows above clear, gray eyes, a firm mouth, and flowing mustache. By the time he reached Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika early in 1876, he weighed only 118 pounds, and his black, wavy hair was streaked with gray.

Already, though, he had become the first white man to navigate and chart Lake Victoria, and he had discovered Lake George. Still greater achievements lay ahead. From Lake Tanganyika, he headed north along the Lualaba River, taking a route no European had ever followed and one that even Africans feared, for the river was lined with cannibals. By choosing to go north rather than south, Stanley was to “do” geography indeed, for he not only discovered Stanley Falls and Stanley Pool, but also was to demonstrate conclusively that the Lualaba was part of the Congo rather than the Nile. Moreover, he would become the first European to travel the length of the Congo, for waterfalls and rapids blocked the way from the west, and previously the jungle had denied access from the east.

Again Stanley’s feats aroused the interest of the Western world. Gold medals flowed in from learned societies in Europe and the United States; both houses of Congress gave Stanley a unanimous vote of thanks. Léon Gambetta of France summarized the popular sentiment of the day when he declared,

Not only, sir, have you opened up a new continent to our view, but you have given an impulse to scientific and philanthropic enterprise which will have a material effect on the progress of the world.

Such, in fact, were Stanley’s aims. He hoped to end the slave trade in Central Africa, Christianize the Africans and improve their material lot through commerce with the West. Events were to prove these plans illusory, for Stanley’s explorations were to open the western half of the continent to Arab slave traders and equally exploitative European empire builders.

Stanley was still largely unaware of this perversion of his dreams when he agreed to return to the Congo for the Comité d’Études du Haut Congo, organized by King Leopold II of Belgium. He would have preferred British support, but England was not interested. When Lieutenant Verney Lovett Cameron attempted to annex part of the Congo for the British Empire, Parliament refused the offer. Working for Leopold, Stanley earned his nickname, Bula Matari, “smasher of stones.” Between 1879 and 1882, he surpassed the king’s expectations, founding Leopoldville, building a three-hundred-mile wagon road from the Atlantic to Stanley Pool, and creating a small fleet to navigate the upper Congo River beyond. Because of these efforts, Belgium would receive 900,000 square miles in the center of the continent.

In November, 1886, Stanley began a lecture tour in the United States to recount his recent adventures, about which he had also written a book, The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State (1885). The work was sufficiently popular to be translated into seventeen languages. He was quickly recalled for his final trip to Africa, though, this time to rescue Emin Pasha (born Eduard Carl Schmitzev), a German posing as a Turk. This mysterious figure had been appointed governor of the Equatorial Province in southern Sudan and had remained loyal to England after the followers of Muhammed Ahmed (the Mahdi) had overrun Khartoum and killed General Charles George Gordon, the British governor (1885).

For some reason, Stanley chose to approach Emin Pasha from the west. If he expected that the roads, stations, and fleet he had set up along the Congo would speed his journey, he was mistaken, for much of what he had established was already reverting to jungle. The march was in many ways a disaster. More than half the members of the expedition died along the way, and rumors of Stanley’s death also circulated. On December 21, 1887, however, Parliament learned that Stanley had accomplished his mission of resupplying Emin, and the House of Commons rose in a body to give him an ovation in absentia.

Of all Stanley’s forays into Africa, this last had the least enduring significance. Emin was better supplied than Stanley with everything but ammunition, and even this relief was not sufficient to prevent his being forced to flee shortly afterward. However, Stanley was again the hero of the day. Already in Zanzibar, Stanley found piles of telegrams from world leaders. He had promised his publisher a book about the expedition, so he stayed in Cairo because he knew that in Europe he would be kept too busy to complete it. Meanwhile, in Berlin audiences watched a play about his adventures in Africa. In Reykjavík, people sang “Aurora Borealis” about his feats. Mugs and plates bearing Stanley’s picture appeared in London shops, as did song sheets with titles such as “Stanley’s Rescue” and “The Victor’s Return.” A lecture tour in the United States brought Stanley sixty thousand dollars; a similar round of talks in England added another ten thousand dollars.

The workhouse boy from Wales had become rich. He also finally found a wife. Twice before, he had been jilted, and in 1886, Dorothy Tennant had rejected his proposal. Now she changed her mind, and on July 12, 1890, they were married in Westminster Abbey. The ceremony assumed the scale of a coronation. The Abbey was filled with the prominent and the powerful, including William Ewart Gladstone, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker of the House of Commons. So popular was the event that five thousand people had to be turned away from the overcrowded church.

At his wife’s urging, in 1892 Stanley gave up his American citizenship, which he had taken in 1885 to protect his royalties from piracy. Shortly afterward, he stood for Parliament; though he lost his first bid, he succeeded in 1895 and served for five years. To a man of action, the House of Commons held little fascination, however, and he complained of its “asphyxiating atmosphere.” Honors continued to pour in; in 1899, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Bath, thus becoming Sir Henry Morton Stanley, and the Atheneum, the most prestigious club in London, elected him a member.

Stanley still longed for action and Africa, but his four expeditions had aged him. In 1900, he retired to Surrey, where his wife named a local stream the Congo and a small lake Stanley Pool. These were the closest he would come to the places that had made him famous. He died in London on May 10, 1904.

Significance

Henry Morton Stanley had hoped to be buried in Westminster Abbey near Livingstone, with whom his name had been so closely linked. Although his funeral did occur there, he was denied burial in the historical shrine because by 1904 his name had also become associated with the Congo Free State, a synonym for atrocities.

“I was sent for a special work,” Stanley had written in his autobiography, a work he had defined as “the redemption of the splendid central basin of the continent by sound and legitimate commerce.” Through his explorations and his writings, he had opened up that area to reveal its richness to the Western world. His call for missionaries during the 1870’s had brought such a response from England that Uganda became a British colony. He not only drew up the borders of the Congo Free State, later to become the Belgian Congo, but also ensured British involvement in the Sudan and eastern Africa through his various expeditions. As a journalist and explorer, he never failed to accomplish the missions on which he was sent. Whether he thereby effected Africa’s redemption or damnation, though, remains an open question more than a century after he shed the first rays of light on Africa’s heart of darkness.

Bibliography

Anstruther, Ian. Dr. Livingstone, I Presume? New York: E. P. Dutton, 1957. A detailed account of Stanley’s early years and his rescue of Dr. Livingstone. Though the book touches briefly on Stanley’s later achievements, it essentially ends in 1874.

Dugand, Martin. Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone. New York: Doubleday, 2003. In alternating chapters, Dugand traces both men’s journeys into Africa. Provides a detailed re-creation of their expeditions; contrasts their personalities and thoughts about Africa.

Farwell, Byron. Man Who Presumed: A Biography of Henry M. Stanley. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1957. A good biography for the general reader. Farwell adds no new information, but his account is clearly written and entertaining.

Gallop, Alan. Mr. Stanley, I Presume? The Life and Explorations of Henry Morton Stanley. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 2004. Frank and scholarly account of Stanley’s life and personality.

Hall, Richard. Stanley: An Adventurer Explored. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975. The most detailed biography, revealing many previously unknown details about Stanley’s early life. Maps and photographs supplement the well-written text.

Newman, James L. Imperial Footprints: Henry Morton Stanley’s African Journeys. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2004. Re-creates Stanley’s seven African journeys, describing his reasons for making the expeditions, what happened en route, and the results of his trips.

Severin, Timothy. “The Making of an American Lion.” American Heritage 25 (February, 1974): 4-11, 82-85. Stanley was passing himself off as an American two decades before he assumed United States citizenship. Severin tells Stanley’s story from the American perspective, concentrating on his early life in this country and the ecstatic American response to his achievements.

Smith, Ian R. The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, 1886-1890. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1972. A scholarly examination of Stanley’s last African adventure. Draws on previously unpublished material to place the expedition in the context of European imperialism. Also recounts the harrowing experiences of both the Advance and Rear Columns trying to reach Emin Pasha.

Tames, Richard Lawrence Ames. Henry Morton Stanley. Aylesbury, England: Shire, 1973. In less than fifty pages, Tames provides a good overview of Stanley’s career. The brief text is richly illustrated to reveal both the man and his milieu.