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The Infamous, Outrageous Henry Morton Stanley
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 |
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