January 28, 2013
Henry Morton Stanley is most remembered for his story of the expedition to report on the fate of Dr. David Livingstone, the almost mythical 19th century medical missionary and explorer, who was lost from touch while seeking the source of the Nile River.
On assignment from the New York Herald, Stanley went looking for the famous explorer, in his 1872 book, “How I Found Dr. Livingstone,” Stanley related the moment:
“As I advanced slowly toward him I noticed he was pale, looked wearied, had a gray beard, wore a bluish cap with a faded gold band round it, had on a red-sleeved waistcoat and a pair of gray tweed trousers. I would have run to him, only I was a coward in the presence of such a mob, - would have embraced him, only, he being an Englishman, I did not know how he would receive me; so I did what cowardice and false pride suggested was the best thing, - walked deliberately to him, took off my hat, and said:
“'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'”
Whether recalled accurately, Stanley’s notes from that day do not exist and Livingstone’s accounts do not recall the words, the quote has come to represent the ultimate in blinding glimpses of the obvious.
Henry Morton Stanley was born on Jan. 28, 1841, in Denbigh, Wales. His mother, Elizabeth Parry was young, 19, and unmarried; she named her son John Rowlands, giving him the father’s last name, though he died within weeks of the birth. His childhood was rough, and he lived in a workhouse for the poor, where abuse was commonplace.
He signed on as a ship’s hand; the abusive life of a sailor was abandoned when he stole off his ship when it arrived in New Orleans. There, he met Henry Hope Stanley, a former preacher turned trader. Their relationship blossomed to the point that Mr. Stanley “adopted” Rowlands, and Rowlands adopted his name; in 1859, Henry Morton Stanley was “born.”
Stanley fought in the Confederate Army, at Shiloh, and was taken prisoner. He became a galvanized Yankee, joining the Union Army to get out of internment. Stanley lasted only a few weeks in the Union Army before he was discharged with severe illness; he joined the Union Navy in 1864 (though he once again jumped ship after serving seven months).
After the war, Stanley began the career that made him famous, a journalist that reported from fantastic expeditions for the New York newspapers. His reports on his African expeditions for the New York Herald, particularly of his trip up the Congo River, led to a commission from King Leopold II of Belgium.
Stanley led an international aid expedition that was a cover for the King’s ambitions to lay claim to the interior of the Congo for a private holding company he had founded. The expedition, ostensibly to rescue Emin Pasha, the governor of Equatoria, was successful, but more notable for the wake of destruction it left and the decades of exploitation that Leopold managed in the Congo Free State his company established. Leopold, who never visited the empire he carved out of the claims made on the expedition, ruled over what many call the genocide of the tribes in the region. Between 10 and 13 million “Congolese” died in the decades of Leopold’s Congo Free State to farm rubber, harvest ivory, and support his lavish life in Belgium.
The era of African exploration made “heroes” of the men who published the stories of the expeditions. Stanley returned to Britain, became a Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament, and was eventually knighted. He died on May 10, 1904.
A quote is a benign legacy compared to the manner in which Stanley was used to further the greed of the Belgian king.