Emin Pasha Relief Expedition participant Henry Morton Stanley
Background
With the capture of Khartoum by the Mahdists (followers of Islamic religious leader Muhammad Ahmad) in 1885, the Ottoman-Egyptian administration of the Sudan collapsed. Equatoria, the extreme southern province of the Sudan, was nearly cut off from the outside world, located as it was on the upper reaches of the Nile near Lake Albert. Emin Pasha was a German Jewish-born Ottoman doctor and naturalist who had been appointed Governor of Equatoria by Charles George Gordon, the British general who himself had attempted to relieve Khartoum. Emin, able to send and receive letters via Buganda and Zanzibar, had been informed in February 1886 that the Egyptian government would abandon Equatoria. In July, he was encouraged by missionary Alexander Mackay to invite the British government to annex Equatoria itself. The government was not interested in such a doubtful venture, but the British public came to see Emin as a second General Gordon, in mortal danger from the Mahdists.
Scottish businessman and philanthropist William Mackinnon had been involved in various colonial ventures, and by November he had approached Stanley about leading a relief expedition. Stanley declared himself ready "at a moment's notice" to go. Mackinnon then approached J. F. Hutton, a business acquaintance also involved in colonial activities, and together they organized the "Emin Pasha Relief Committee", mostly consisting of Mackinnon's friends, whose first meeting was on 19 December 1886. The Committee raised a total of about £32,000.
Stanley was officially still in the employment of Leopold II of Belgium, by whom he had been employed in carving out Leopold's 'Congo Free State'. As a compromise for letting Stanley go, it was arranged in a meeting in Brussels between Stanley and the king, that the expedition would take a longer route up the Congo River, contrary to plans for a shorter route inland from the eastern African coast. In return, Leopold would provide his Free State steamers for the transportation of the expedition up the river, from Stanley Pool (now Pool Malebo) as far as the mouth of the Aruwimi River.
By 1 January 1887, Stanley was back in London preparing the expedition to widespread public acclaim. Stanley himself was intent that the expedition be one of humanitarian assistance rather than of military conquest. He declared:
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