Henry Morton Stanley has twice crossed my path in recent
readings. The first time was when I was reading some book
(whose name I cannot now remember) about the Civil War, and
found that Stanley actually fought for the Confederacy and
was captured at Shiloh. He promptly turned coat and
enlisted in the Union Navy, from which he later deserted.
That is what I read first.

This was not his first desertion, however. As John Rowlands
(his birth name - he was born in Denbigh, Wales), he worked
as a seaman on a ship sailing to America, where, in New
Orleans, he deserted, befriended a wealthy trader, Henry
Hope Stanley, was informally adopted (he was 18 when they
met), and changed his name to Henry Morton Stanley.

After the war, he organized an expedition to the Ottoman
Empire, was captured, and talked his way to freedom. He
then got a job as a journalist and eventually went after
David Livingstone in Africa.

Next, he mounted an expedition to explore the Congo River,
and traveled up it for 1,500 miles, inspiring Joseph
Conrad's novella. This is where I picked him up again,
reading Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of
Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998). After
this expedition, he came to the attention of King Leopold II
of Belgium, the Mussolini of his time, looking for an
African land not yet taken by other Great Nations of Europe.
Stanley now turns from simply a mischievous adventurer
into an exploitative viceroy of Belgium. He formed a
company, made treaties for Belgium with local lords
(treaties which King Leopold later altered as he wished),
and used force and brutality to impose the will of Belgium
on the people of central Africa. He was called Bula Matari
by the locals - "Breaker of Rocks" in the Kikongo language,
for the forced manual labor used to build roads. He enabled
slave traders and, inadvertently, spread a serious disease
throughout central Africa. A final expedition through
Africa was marred by even more brutality and inhumanity.

--
Francis A. Miniter

Mesure is Medicine þauh þou muche ȝeor[n]e.
Al nis not good to þe gost þat þe bodi lykeþ,
Ne lyflode to þe licam þat leof is to þe soule.

William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman
Passus I, lines 33 - 35