page_title: Henry Morton Stanley
section_title: Stanley as Leopold's agent
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Morton Stanley / Claiming the Congo for the Belgian king / Stanley as Leopold's agent
caption_attribution_description: English: Sir Henry Morton Stanley
context_page_description: Sir Henry Morton Stanley GCB was a Welsh-American journalist, explorer, soldier, colonial administrator, author and politician who was famous for his exploration of central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone, whom he later claimed to have greeted with the now-famous line: "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" He is mainly known for his search for the source of the Nile, work he undertook as an agent of King Leopold II of Belgium, which enabled the occupation of the Congo Basin region, and for his command of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He was knighted in 1899.
context_section_description: Stanley, much more familiar with the rigours of the African climate and the complexities of local politics than Leopold (who never in his whole life set foot in the Congo), persuaded his patron that the first step should be the construction of a wagon trail around the Congo rapids and a chain of trading stations on the river. Leopold agreed, and in deepest secrecy, Stanley signed a five-year contract at a salary of £1,000 a year and set off to Zanzibar under an assumed name. To avoid discovery, materials and workers were shipped in by various roundabout routes, and communications between Stanley and Leopold were entrusted to Colonel Maximilien Strauch.
  In time Stanley gained glimmerings of the magnitude of Leopold's ambition. Before Stanley arrived on the Congo, he had been told that the purpose of his mission was to construct a series of trading stations in order to open the Congo to international trade, but, in fact,  Leopold secretly meant to carve out an entire nation. When Leopold admitted what he really had in mind, he was explicit: "It is a question of creating a new State, as big as possible, and of running it. It is clearly understood that in this project there is no question of granting the slightest political power to the negros. That would be absurd." When Colonel Strauch put the king's plan to Stanley, he was shocked and replied that creating a state in this way would be 'madness' and told the king: 'On the contrary, they [the Congolese] will retain their own tribal chiefs and be as jealous as ever of every tribal right.' 
  In October 1882, Leopold wrote angrily to Strauch: 'The terms of the treaties Stanley has made with native chiefs do not satisfy me. There must at least be an added article to the effect that  they delegate to us their sovereign rights ... the treaties must be as brief as possible and in a couple of articles must grant us everything.' 
  Tim Jeal has described how a dissatisfied Leopold destroyed as many of Stanley's early treaties as he could get his hands on, sidelined him as a negotiator, and substituted forgeries produced by new negotiators appointed by himself. Jeal found one previously unknown original Stanley treaty in Brussels and quoted from this and from the only other surviving original treaty, showing that Stanley had not claimed the land from the chiefs, but had made rental agreements with them, paid for with goods, giving him the right to trade in certain areas, build trading stations and a road, but nothing else.  Because Leopold never trusted Stanley to deliver to him his own private state on the Congo, he would not send him back there as governor, which Stanley had expected to happen on leaving in 1885. Before that, Stanley had written to the king that no Belgian officer was entitled to treat the Congolese 'as though they were conquered subjects ... This is all wrong. They are subjects  – but it is we who are simply tenants.' 
  
  For all his social shortcomings in European society, he had great success in building trading stations and in completing the programme of road building.  Within three years, his capacity for hard work, had resulted in the presence of steamships on the upper Congo. He had also outwitted the French Empire-builder Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza and claimed the best sites on the Congo for trading stations. 
  It has been asserted without citations, that he showed skill at playing one social group off against another, and was ruthless in his use of modern weaponry to kill opponents while opening the route to the Upper Congo. This is contradicted by the written evidence of missionaries on the upper Congo. The Baptist T.J.Comber wrote that Stanley had peacefully established the trading station that would become Kinshasa 'by dint of constant, daily exercise of his tact and influence over the people ... Mr Stanley had succeeded in planting his station at Stanley Pool without a fight ... '   
  In later years, Stanley would write that the most vexing part of his duties was not the work itself but was keeping order in the ill-assorted collection of Belgian and British w
caption: Henry Morton Stanley, 1890
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