Sir Henry Morton Stanley | British explorer | Britannica.com Sir Henry Morton Stanley Alternative Titles: Bula Matari, John Rowlands Sir Henry Morton Stanley T.S. Eliot Sir Henry Morton Stanley, original name John Rowlands, Congolese byname Bula Matari (“Breaker of Rocks”) (born January 28, 1841, Denbigh , Denbighshire , Wales —died May 10, 1904, London , England ), British American explorer of central Africa , famous for his rescue of the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone and for his discoveries in and development of the Congo region. He was knighted in 1899. Sir Henry Morton Stanley, detail of a portrait by Sir Hubert von Herkomer; in the City Museum & … Courtesy of the City Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol, England Early life Stanley’s parents, John Rowlands and Elizabeth Parry, gave birth to him out of wedlock. He grew up partly in the charge of reluctant relatives, partly in St. Asaph Workhouse. Modern research has shown his own account of ill treatment and a dramatic escape to be almost entirely a fantasy.

There seem to have been no extraordinary events attending his departure from the workhouse at age 15, after receiving a reasonable education. The humiliations of institutional life and his mother’s consistent neglect did, however, leave deep marks on his personality. After an interlude of dependence on relatives, he sailed from Liverpool as a cabin boy and landed at New Orleans in 1859. There Rowlands was befriended by a merchant, Henry Hope Stanley, whose first and last names the boy adopted in an apparent effort to make a fresh start in life with a new identity; “Morton” was added later. Passages in Stanley’s Autobiography concerning this period contain serious misstatements, particularly in regard to the movements of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Hope Stanley and the degree of intimacy that existed between them and young Rowlands. For some years Stanley led a roving life, as a soldier in the American Civil War , a seaman on merchant ships and in the U.S. Navy, and a journalist in the early days of frontier expansion; he even managed a trip to Turkey, recorded in My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (1895).

In 1867 Stanley offered his services to James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald as a special correspondent with the British expeditionary force sent against Tewodros II of Ethiopia, and Stanley was the first to report the fall of Magdala in 1868. An assignment to report on the Spanish Civil War followed, and in 1869 he received instructions to undertake a roving commission in the Middle East , which was to include the relief of Dr. David Livingstone, of whom little had been heard since his departure for Africa in 1866 to search for the source of the Nile . Relief of Livingstone Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent On January 6, 1871, Stanley reached Zanzibar, the starting point for expeditions to the interior, and, intent on a scoop, left on March 21 without disclosing his intentions. His secretive conduct caused much offense to the authorities, especially to Sir John Kirk , the British consul, who had been having difficulty in making contact with Livingstone.

Leading a well-equipped caravan and backed by American money, Stanley forced his way through country disturbed by fighting and stricken by sickness to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika , Livingstone’s last known port of call. There he found the old hero, ill and short of supplies, and greeted him with the famous words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” (The exact date of their meeting is unclear, as both men recorded different dates in their journals; according to Stanley, they met on November 10, 1871, while Livingstone’s journal suggests that the event occurred sometime between October 24 and 28.) A cordial friendship sprang up between the two men, and, when Stanley returned to the coast, he dispatched fresh supplies to enable Livingstone to carry on. The older man’s quest ended a year later with his death in the swamps of Lake Bangweulu, still vainly seeking the Nile in a region that in fact gives rise to the Congo River . Human Exploration: From Earth to Space How I Found Livingstone was published soon after Stanley’s arrival in England in the late summer of 1872, when the exploits of this hitherto unknown adventurer gave rise to controversy.

Members of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) resented an American journalist having succeeded in relieving the famous traveler when they, his friends, had failed. Stanley did, however, receive the RGS Patron’s Gold Medal. In 1873 Stanley went to Asante (Ashanti; now part of modern Ghana) as war correspondent for the New York Herald and in 1874 published his Coomassie and Magdala: The Story of Two British Campaigns in Africa. Discovery and development of the Congo Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies When Livingstone died in 1873, Stanley resolved to take up the exploration of Africa where he had left off. The problem of the Nile sources and the nature of the central African lakes had been only partly solved by earlier explorers. Stanley secured financial backing from the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph of London for an expedition to pursue the quest, and the caravan left Zanzibar on November 12, 1874, heading for Lake Victoria.

His visit to King Mutesa I of Buganda led to the admission of Christian missionaries to the area in 1877 and to the eventual establishment of a British protectorate in Uganda. Circumnavigating Lake Victoria , Stanley confirmed the explorer John H. Speke’s estimate of its size and importance. Skirmishes with suspicious tribespeople on the lakeshore, which resulted in a number of casualties, gave rise in England to criticism of this new kind of traveler with his journalist’s outlook and forceful methods. Lake Tanganyika was next explored and found to have no connection with the Nile system. Stanley and his men pressed on west to the Lualaba River (the very river that Livingstone had hoped was the Nile but that proved to be the headstream of the Congo). There they joined forces with the Arab trader Tippu Tib , who accompanied them for a few laps downriver, then left Stanley to fight his way first to Stanley Pool (now Malebo Pool ) and then (partly overland) down to the great cataracts he named Livingstone Falls .

Stanley and his men reached the sea on August 12, 1877, after an epic journey described in Through the Dark Continent (1878). Failing to enlist British interests in the development of the Congo region, Stanley took service with the king of Belgium, Leopold II , whose secret ambition it was to annex the region for himself. From August 1879 to June 1884 Stanley was in the Congo basin, where he built a road from the lower Congo up to Stanley Pool and launched steamers on the upper river. (It is from this period, when Stanley persevered in the face of great difficulties, that he earned, from his men, the nickname of Bula Matari [“Breaker of Rocks”]). Originally under international auspices , Stanley’s work was to pave the way for the creation of the Congo Free State , under the sovereignty of King Leopold. These strenuous years are described in The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State (1885). Relief of Emin Paşa Henry Morton Stanley - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up) (1841-1904).

The first European to explore the Congo River from Central Africa to the Atlantic Ocean was Henry Morton Stanley. He traveled the great river for 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Nyangwe, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to its mouth. When he embarked on his long journey he had no way of knowing what river it was or where it would lead him. The Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone had discovered the headstream of the Congo River. Livingstone had noted that it flowed northward and had hoped that it might be the headstream of the Nile. But as Stanley journeyed downstream the river turned westward. He decided, as Livingstone himself had suspected, that it might be the Congo, whose mouth on the west coast was already known.

Article History Stanley - Exploration and exploitation in Africa, Henry Morton Stanley <MAP NAME="boxmap-p14"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="37, 588, 126, 600" HREF="" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="" ></MAP><img src="" width="160" height="600" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p14" alt="Shop at Amazon.com"> Stanley Exploration - exploitation John Rowlands, born January 28th 1841, was the illegitimate child of a woman from Wales. His mother and everybody else deserted him completely in his childhood, and in his early teens he left for America on a ship. He found work as a servant in New Orleans and was more or less adopted by the family he worked for. He took his new name from his employer and now became Henry Morton Stanley. He is notorious for making his own life story look different than it was, and he changed many facts in his autobiography and other of his books. He even lied about his heritage and claimed to be born in USA.

Stanley fought for the south-states army in the American civil war from 1862, but was soon captured by enemy forces. To avoid staying in prison he changed side and became soldier in the north state forces. Stanley developed to become a young and ambitious journalist. He frequently improved his stories or simply made them up. But he was good at it and it kept the editors happy. In 1870 he was assigned by New York Herald to search for the missionary David Livingstone in Africa. Livingstone had been reported missing for some time. Rumors were that he had been killed giving out prayers and medicine somewhere near Lake Tanganyika. Livingstone was already world famous and a best selling author. Any news about him could sell newspapers. Gordon Bennet Jr. , the owner of the New York Herald, was ready to pay a high price for the Livingstone-story. Bennet employed Stanley to find the missing adventurer -dead or alive, so to speak. After preparing for almost a year, Stanley and his crew of around 170 men followed the same route as Livingstone. They started from the island Zanzibar out of the East African coast.

An official expedition led by Verney Cameron had already been sent out, but the Americans (Bennet/Stanley) wanted to prove that they were superior to the British Empire. Livingstone was a legend and it would be a scoop for any journalist/newspaper to find him. A race for Livingstone had started. Cameron had a bad start, fighting diseases - and after several months of trekking it was Stanley who caught up with Dr. Livingstone. Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Anglo-American journalist and explorer. Born: 1904 in London Following in the footsteps of Livingstone On November 10, 1871 Stanley approached Livingstone in the village of Ujiji. The village is on the eastern coast of Lake Tanganyika in what we today know as Tanzania. Stanley had found the only other white man in this remote part of the "dark continent". He greeted him with the famous words: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Livingstone was old and troubled by diseases, but with help from Stanley he came back on his feet and continued his search for the source of the Nile. In the next four months they explored the northern part of Lake Tanganyika together.

While Livingstone continued his search, Stanley returned to London to tell his story about how the two explorers became friends. It is important to notice that the only source to these events are Stanley himself, as Livingstone did not return from Africa alive. Stanley wrote a book about their meeting and he was present when the remains of Livingstone was buried a few years later. He probably enjoyed seeing how the British said goodbye to a hero, but did he really understand what Livingstone had done to deserve this honor? Livingstone cleared the way for many years of brutal exploitation of Africa - but his aim was different. He was loved by his African followers when he preached his way through the jungle. He shared his knowledge of medicine and wanted progress for Africa. First all he hoped to stop the inhumane slave trade once and for all. Stanley, on the other hand, clearly despised the black Africans (and any other non-caucasian). Stanley was hard on his helpers and often whipped or chained them as punishment for being "lazy". Henry Stanley is in charge of his African men: "If you drop that, I will shoot!". He must have been really proud of himself as the drawing is from Stanley's own book "How I found Livingstone".

In the following years Stanley returned to Africa exploring deeper into today's D.R. Congo and Uganda. This expedition was different. Stanley traveled with several hundred men, modern equipment, a ship(!) and plenty of weapons. He was still in competition with Cameron and other explorers, so he used guns to force his men forward at high pace. Livingstone didn't kill anyone on his expeditions, but Stanley destroyed everything in his way and fought wars with the local tribes. He managed to navigate on Lake Victoria and finally followed the Congo River all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. He became the first European to map these areas. In 1878 he went back to Europe loaded with Ivory and eager to tell of his findings. A dirty job for the King of Belgium King Leopold II of Belgium wanted his own colony abroad more than anything else. He probably already owned everything else and his only aim was to increase his own personal wealth and power. The small country of Belgium had no fleet and was relative isolated in the middle of Europe. Neither the Belgium government nor the other European countries would give the King what he wanted, so he decided to take it himself.

He heard about Stanley's discoveries in Congo and was intrigued by the promises of this rich country far away. The King hired Stanley as his personal head of a colonization project with almost unlimited resources. The official story was that the King had formed the "African International Association for development in Central Africa" - and Stanley was expected to make local contacts on his expedition. Stanley had become famous from his meeting with Livingstone, and this story probably gave the expedition some credibility. But compared to Livingstone, Stanley suffered from a complete lack of moral. Stanley was in Africa once again. This time he started his expedition from the Atlantic coast and he brought with him hundreds of workers. He struggled his way into Congo, put ships in Congo River, constructed roads and railways at an amazing speed. Stanley cleared all obstacles for the greedy ambitions of the Belgian King. When moving forward, he was very efficient in cheating or forcing the local chiefs to sell their land and submit to horrible conditions of the new owner. Stanley became more and more brutal in his methods and did not hesitate to shoot the Africans. Soon he had conquered the country and King Leopold had complete control with what was now called the "Congo Free State".

Free trade of course, certainly not free for the people living there. The horrors and tragedies in Africa during colonialism are endless, but it is probably safe to assume that no place were as evil a place as the huge Belgian colony. The King personally owned Congo! The colony was not the property of the Belgian state. The King earned a giant fortune from selling concessions for rubber and mining in the Free State. By taking women and children as hostages, men were forced to work for king Leopold. The King's soldiers also used torture, killing and started a horrible tradition of cutting off hands to prove that their bullets were spent well. The navigator and author Joseph Conrad wrote his famous novel Heart of Darkness after seeing with his own eyes what Leopold II were doing to Congo. In 1908 the colony was finally turned over to the Belgian government and became "Belgian Congo". Some reforms were made, but at very slow pace and for Congo it was just a new chapter in the tragedy. Stanley did an outstanding job for King Leopold II. When he had finished his deeds in Africa, he went to London and was offered a seat in the Parliament. He died in 1904.

BBC - History - Historic Figures: Henry Stanley (1841 - 1904) Historic Figures z Sir Henry Morton Stanley, c.1872 © Stanley was a Welsh-born American journalist and explorer, famous for his search for David Livingstone and his part in the European colonisation of Africa. Henry Morton Stanley was born John Rowlands on 28 January 1841 in Denbigh, Wales. His parents were not married, and he was brought up in a workhouse. In 1859, he left for New Orleans. There he was befriended by a merchant, Henry Stanley, whose name he took. Stanley went on to serve on both sides in the American Civil War and then worked as a sailor and journalist. In 1867, Stanley became special correspondent for the New York Herald. Two years later he was commissioned by the paper to go to Africa and search for Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone, of whom little had been heard since 1866 when he had set off to search for the source of the Nile. Stanley reached Zanzibar in January 1871 and proceeded to Lake Tanganyika, Livingstone's last known location.

There in November 1871 he found the sick explorer, greeting him with the famous words: 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' Stanley's reports on his expedition made his name. When Livingstone died in 1873, Stanley resolved to continue his exploration of the region, funded by the Herald and a British newspaper. He explored vast areas of central Africa, and travelled down the length of the Lualaba and Congo Rivers, reaching the Atlantic in August 1877, after an epic journey that he later described in 'Through the Dark Continent' (1878). Failing to gain British support for his plans to develop the Congo region, Stanley found more success with King Leopold II of Belgium, who was eager to tap Africa's wealth. In 1879, with Leopold's support, Stanley returned to Africa where he worked to open the lower Congo to commerce by the construction of roads. He used brutal means that included the widespread use of forced labour. Competition with French interests in the region helped bring about the Berlin Conference (1884-1885) in which European powers sorted out their competing colonial claims in Africa.

Stanley's efforts paved the way for the creation of the Congo Free State, privately owned by Leopold. In 1890, now back in Europe, Stanley married and then began a worldwide lecture tour. He became member of parliament for Lambeth in south London, serving from 1895 to 1900. He was knighted in 1899. He died in London on 10 May 1904. Henry Stanley 1841 - 1904 Sir Henry Morton Stanley, British explorer and journalist, opened Central Africa to exploitation by Western nations. Henry Stanley was originally named John Rowland. He was born near Denbigh Castle, Wales, to John Rowland, a farmer, and an unmarried woman. The boy lived with his maternal grandfather until he was about 6, when his grandfather died. The youngster was sent to a workhouse, where he remained until the age of 15, when he ran away. Young Rowland lived on a hand-to-mouth basis with various relatives until he was 18, when he signed on as a cabin boy and shipped to New Orleans.

There a cotton broker, Henry Morton Stanley, adopted him and gave him his name. Stanley's adopted father died without providing for him. The young man volunteered as a Confederate soldier and was captured at Shiloh. He was released from prison by changing sides and finished the war in the Union Navy. After the war Stanley became a newspaper correspondent. He covered Indian campaigns in the American West. In 1868 he went to Abyssinia to cover a British expedition. In 1869 the publisher of the New York Herald commissioned Stanley to find Dr. David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary explorer, lost somewhere in Central Africa. Stanley found Livingstone at Ujiji in 1871 after an 8-month search. They did some exploring together, and when Livingstone died in 1873, Stanley stepped into his shoes. In 1874 Stanley began a 3-year journey to measure the lakes of Central Africa. From 1879 to 1884 he opened the Congo River Basin and laid the groundwork for the Congo Free State after setting up 21 trading posts along the river.

Between 1887 and 1890 he led a mission to rescue Emin Pasha, the governor of Equatoria. Stanley settled the question of the source of the Nile and opened a vast territory which accelerated the desire of European countries to control African soil. On July 12, 1890, Stanley married Dorothy Tennant. In 1895 he became a member of Parliament, and 4 years later he was knighted, receiving the Grand Cross of the Bath. He died on May 10, 1904, in London. ~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~ Sir Henry Morton Stanley, born John Rowlands (January 28, 1841 – May 10, 1904), was a journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone. Stanley is often remembered for the words uttered to Livingstone upon finding him: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Biography He was born in Denbigh, Wales.

His mother, Betsy Parry, was nineteen years old at the time of his birth. According to Stanley himself, his father, John Rowlands, was an alcoholic; there is some doubt as to his true parentage [1]. The parents were unmarried, so his birth certificate refers to him as a bastard, and the stigma of illegitimacy weighed heavily upon him all his life. He was raised by his grandfather until the age of five. When his guardian died, the boy was sent to St. Asaph Union Workhouse, where overcrowding and lack of supervision resulted in frequent abuse by the older boys. He stayed until the age of 15. After completing an elementary education, he was employed as a pupil teacher in a National School. In 1859, at the age of 18, he made his passage to the United States in search of a new life. Upon arriving in New Orleans, he became friendly with a wealthy trader named Stanley, whose name he later assumed.

After military service with both sides in the American Civil War, Stanley was recruited in 1867 by Colonel Samuel Forster Tappan (a one-time journalist) of the Indian Peace Commission to serve as a correspondent to cover the work of the Commission for several newspapers. Stanley was soon retained exclusively by James Gordon Bennett (1795-1872), founder of the New York Herald. This early period of his professional life is described in Volume I of his book My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (1895). He became one of the Herald's overseas correspondents and, in 1869, was instructed by Bennett's son to find the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone, who was known to be in Africa but had not been heard from for some time. According to Stanley's account, he asked James Gordon Bennett, Jr. (1841-1918), who had succeeded to the paper's management at his father's retirement in 1867, how much he could spend.

The reply was "Draw ï¿½1,000 now, and when you have gone through that, draw another ï¿½1,000, and when that is spent, draw another ï¿½1,000, and when you have finished that, draw another ï¿½1,000, and so on — BUT FIND LIVINGSTONE!"" Stanley travelled to Zanzibar and outfitted an expedition with the best of everything, requiring no fewer than 200 porters. He found Livingstone on November 10, 1871, in Ujiji near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania, and greeted him (at least according to his own journal) with the now famous, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley joined him in exploring the region, establishing for certain that there was no connection between Lake Tanganyika and the River Nile. On his return, he wrote a book about his experiences.

The New York Herald, in partnership with Britain's Daily Telegraph, then financed him on another expedition to the African continent, one of his achievements being to solve the last great mystery of African exploration by tracing the course of the River Congo to the sea. In later years he spent much energy defending himself against charges that his African expeditions had been marked by callous violence and brutality. Stanley's opinion was that "the savage only respects force, power, boldness, and decision." Stanley would eventually be held responsible for a number of deaths and was indirectly responsible for helping establish the rule of Lï¿½opold II of Belgium over the Congo Free State. In addition, the spread of African trypanosomiasis across central Africa is attributed to the movements of Stanley's enormous baggage train and the Emin Pasha relief expedition. In 1886, Stanley led the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition to "rescue" Emin Pasha, the governor of Equatoria in the southern Sudan. After immense hardships and great loss of life, Stanley met Emin in 1888, discovered the Ruwenzori Range and Lake Edward, and emerged from the interior with Emin and his surviving followers at the end of 1890.

On his return to Europe, he married Welsh artist Dorothy Tennant, and they adopted a child, Denzil. He entered Parliament as Unionist member for Lambeth North, serving from 1895 to 1900. He became Sir Henry Morton Stanley when he was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1899, in recognition of his service to the British Empire in Africa. He died in London on May 10, 1904; at his funeral, he was eulogized by Daniel P. Virmar. His grave, in the churchyard of St. Michael's Church in Pirbright, Surrey, is marked by a large piece of granite. Trivia * On his return to England, he was presented with one of the first of the newly-invented wax-cylinder recording machines (Phonographs), and made a point of recording the voices of famous elderly men before they died. * In 1939, a popular film called Stanley and Livingstone was released, with Spencer Tracy as Stanley and Cedric Hardwicke as Livingstone. * Ray Thomas, flautist and vocalist with the Moody Blues, wrote a song entitled, "Dr.

Livingstone, I Presume," which was released on their 1968 album, In Search Of The Lost Chord. * An NES game based on him was released in 1992 and called "Stanley: The Search for Dr. Livingston" [1] * Stanley Electric Co., Ltd - in short: Stanley Electric - located in Tokyo, Japan - obtained the right to use Stanley's family name in honour of his discoveries "that have brought light into many spots of the world undiscovered and hitherto unknown to mankind". The company produces light emitting diodes, liquid crystal displays and all kinds of lamps, including automotive headlamps. * His great grandson, Richard Stanley, is a South African filmmaker and director of documentaries.[2] * Tim Jeal in 'Stanley' comes to the motivated conclusion that the words "Dr. Livingstone, I Presume" were probably not spoken. * There is a hospital in St. Asaph, North Wales named after H. M. Stanley in honour of his birth in the area, it was the former workhouse he spent much of his early life in.

~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~<"((((((><~~~ American journalist and adventurer, who took New York Herald's mission ”to go and find Livingstone”. In his diary HOW I FOUND LIVINGSTONE (1872) Stanley presents his story with stoicism, without magnifying his epic adventure of hardships of the journey. He travelled 700 miles in 236 days before he found the ailing Scottish missionary-explorer David Livingstone on the island of Ujiji. At meeting Livingstone, Stanley tried to hide his enthusiasm and uttered his famous, pompous greeting: "Doctor Livingstone, I presume!" Stanley was considered the most effective explorer of his day, who led expeditions along the Congo and the Nile in 1874-77 and at the same time paved the way for ruthless colonial rule in these areas. He helped create Lï¿½opold's Congo Free State, ruled by the Belgian monarch as a personal domain, and British possessions on the upper Nile in the 1880s.

I would have run to him, only I was a coward in the presence of such a mob - would have embraced him, but that I did not know how he would receive me; so I did what moral cowardice and false pride suggested was the best thing--walked deliberately to him, took off my hat, and said: "DR. LIVINGSTONE, I PRESUME?" "Yes," said he, with a kind, cordial smile, lifting his cap slightly. (from How I Found Livingstone) Henry Morton Stanley was born at Denbigh in North Wales, the illegitimate son of John Rowlands and Elisabeth Parry - on the birth register of St. Hilary's Church he was entered as "John Rowlands, Bastard". Stanley's father died in a potato field in 1846; he was seventy-five. Abandoned by his mother, Stanley spent his early years in the custody of his two uncles and his maternal grandfather. After his grandfather died, he was consigned at the age of six to the St. Asaph Workhouse, where male adults "took part in every possible vice," as an investigative commission reported in 1847.

However, Stanley received a fair education and he became a voracious reader. At fifteen, Stanley left St. Asaph's and stayed some years with his relatives. At seventeen, he ran away to sea and landed in New Orleans. There Stanley gave himself a new name. First he was known as "J. Rolling", but eventually he settled on Henry Morton Stanley after the cotton broker Henry Stanley, for whom he worked in New Orleans. After the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, Stanley joined the Confederate Army, but later he enlisted in the Union Army. In 1864 he served as a clerk at the frigate Minnesota. During the following years, Stanley led a roving life in America, working mostly as a free-lance journalist. He also went to Turkey and Asia Minor as a newspaper correspondent. In 1867-1868 he was a special correspondent for the New York Herald. In 1871 Stanley started his expedition to East Africa. To Katie Gough-Roberts, a young woman living in Denbigh, he sent a number of letters, and planned to marry her after the journey. However, she married an architect.

Although he was deserted by his bearers, plagued by disease and warring tribes but he found Livingstone near Lake Tanganyika in Ujiji on November 10, 1871. Together they explored the northern end of Lake Tangayika - Richard Francis Burton claimed Lake Tanganyika as the source of the River Nile. Livingstone had journeyed extensively in central and southern Africa from 1840 and fought to destroy the slave trade. Livingstone died in 1873 on the Shores of Lake Bagweulu. His body was shipped back to England and buried in Westminster Abbey - Stanley was one of the pall-bearers. On hearing of his hero's death, Stanley decided to follow up Livingstone's researches on the Congo/Zaire and Nile systems, and at the same time examine the discoveries of Burton, Speke and Grant. "Two weeks were allowed me for purchasing boats - a yawl, a gig, and a barge - for giving orders for pontoons, medical stores, and provisions; for making investments in gifts for native chiefs; for obtaining scientific instruments, stationery, &c., &c.

The barge was an invention of my own." (from Through the Dark Continent, 1878) Before the journey, Stanley fell in love with Alice Pike, a seventeen year old American heiress. She married Albert Barney in 1876. "Then sing, O friends, sing the journey is ended; Sing aloud, O friends, sing to the great sea." On his second African adventure, which started in 1874, Stanley journeyed into central Africa. Stanley's three white companions, Frederick Barker and Francis and Edward Pocock, died during the expedition - Stanley himself was nicknamed Bula Matari, "the rock breaker". Stanley circumnavigated Victoria Nyanza, proving it to be the second-largest freshwater lake in the world, and discovered the Shimeeyu River. After sailing down the Livingstone (Congo) River, he reached the Atlantic Ocean on August 12, 1877. When David Livingstone combined geographical, religious, commercial, and humanitarian goals in his exploration journeys, Stanley created the direct link between exploration and colonization, especially in the service of Leopold II of Belgium. Stanley represented Leopold in signing treaties with bewildered African chiefs.

The first expeditions of the Belgians he led to "prove that the Congo natives were susceptible of civilization and that the Congo basin was rich enough to repay exploitation". Stanley's revelation of the commercial possibilities of the region resulted in the setting up of a large trading venture and led to the founding of the Congo Free State in 1885. Leopold II's ruthless exploitation of the country's natural resources - "the rubber atrocities" - were protested by the international community and the Belgian parliament forced the king to give up personal control of the region. In 1877 Stanley made the first complete traverse of the Iruri River, whose waters flow some 800 miles before joining the Congo in the vicinity of present-day Kisangani. By the time he abandoned the river to go directly for Lake Edward, fifty-two of his men were so crippled by leg ulcers and malnutrition, that he had to leave them on the riverbank at a place he named Starvation Camp. Stanley made in 1886 a successful lecturing tour in the United States. The writer Mark Twain introduced him to the audience in Boston in November by comparing Stanley to Columbus: "Now, Columbus started out to discover America.

Well, he didn't need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and hold his grip and sail straight on, and America would discover itself. Here it was, barring his passage the whole length and breadth of the South American continent, and he couldn't get by it. He'd got to discover it. But Stanley started out to find Doctor Livingstone, who was scattered abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast slab of Africa as big as the United States. It was a blind kind of search. He was the worst scattered of men." Stanley organized the relief expedition in search of Emin Pasha, an adventurer, whom he met on the Albert Nyanza in 1888. During this disastrous mission one of Stanley's subordinated bought a slave girl and gave her to cannibals. In 1890 Stanley was in England. His story about his struggle to find Emir Pasha was published in 1890, the year that Joseph Conrad went to Congo, and later returned to his experiences in Heart of Darkness. Stanley visited in the following year the United States and Australia on lecturing tours.

In 1899 Stanley was knighted and in 1895-1900 he sat in Parliament. He died in London on May 10, 1904. Stanley's publications include fiction and nonfiction. His diary, How I found Livingstone, and his account of his journey to the sources of the Nile, THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT (1878), has been reprinted several times. IN DARKEST AFRICA (1890) is a story of Stanley's 1887-89 expedition, and depicts among others pygmies who were still mysterious to the outside world. In adventure books of the nineteenth century, they were usually pictured as dwarfs. Stanley also wrote about the slave trade, but on the other hand he believed in the superiority of the white race. KALULU, PRINCE, KING, AND SLAVE (1874), Stanley's only novel, has been called "an exotic homosexual romance". The story, set in Central Africa, was about Selim, a young Arab boy from Zanzibar.

Selim is taught to accept slavery, but on his journey in the Central Africa Selim himself is captured as a slave. He escapes, befriends an African prince, Kalulu. During his adventures he learns a new, critical view of his family's values and attitudes to slavery. - The story was based on Stanley's observation made during his historical search for Livingstone. In true-life Kalulu, ex-slave acquired in this journey, visited the US and Britain but was drowned on Stanley's second expedition in 1874. Untitled Document Home Page Only a novelist like Charles Dickens could fully imagine the twists and turns in the life story of Henry Morton Stanley, whose great expectations probably were realized. The man most associated with African exploration was born in Denbigh, Wales, adopted an American name, and later obtained English citizenship. In his life he would evolve from a reporter of great stories to become a maker of great events. Draw a £1000 pounds now; and when you have gone through that, draw another thousand, and when that is spent, draw another thousand, and when you have finished that, draw another thousand, and so on; but, find Livingstone!

— charge given Henry Morton Stanley in October 1869 by James Gordon Bennett Baptized “John Rowlands, bastard,” Stanley was the illegitimate son of a farmer known as a drunkard and a butcher’s daughter who worked as a domestic servant. Stanley never knew his father and was given to the care of his grandfather and other relatives as a baby. He spent his formative years (1847-1856) in the St. Asaph’s Poor Law Union Workhouse, where he learned to read, write, and draw, and acquired a respect for authority administered with applications of corporal punishment. At the end of 1857, he shipped to New Orleans as a cabin boy aboard the American packet ship Windermere. Befriended there and unofficially adopted by a mercantile agent named Henry Hope Stanley, the teenager acquired some business experience and later became a shop assistant in Cypress Bend, Arkansas.

(A bout with malaria there probably inured him to more serious consequences from the disease in Africa.) With the outbreak of the American Civil War, he was pressured to join a Confederate regiment of volunteers, the Dixie Greys, and took part with them in the Battle of Shiloh (1862) in Tennessee. Captured by Union forces, Stanley secured his release by pledging allegiance to the North and donning a new blue uniform. Dysentery kept him from further active military service. Stanley’s journalistic career began aboard the Union warship Minnesota off the coast of North Carolina in January 1865, when he wrote an eyewitness account of the ship’s relentless bombardment of Fort Fisher for Northern newspapers. In 1867, he was a special correspondent for the Missouri Democrat, reporting on Major-General Winfield Scott Hancock’s western campaign against Indians, which he criticized, and about an intriguing character known as Wild Bill Hickok. Stanley’s dispatches were syndicated in such papers as the New York Herald, which were clamoring for frontier news.

Later that year, James Gordon Bennett Jr., editor of the Herald, sent Stanley on a trial basis as an exclusive reporter to cover the British rescue of imprisoned missionaries and envoys in Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Stanley’s successful scoop for his New York boss won him a permanent position with the newspaper as a foreign correspondent. After receiving his instructions from Bennett personally in Paris [see box above], Stanley first had to cover the opening of the Suez Canal and then report on other happenings in Crimea, Odessa, Tiflis, Tehran, and India. He finally landed in Zanzibar on 6 January 1871 to begin the search for Dr. David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary and explorer whose whereabouts in central Africa had become a question of international concern since his last letter of 30 May 1869. Within a month, the novice explorer had outfitted his expedition with the best of everything. He prepared for almost every contingency—except failure. He divided his men into five caravans and sent them out on a staggered schedule.

Through bouts with fever, hostile encounters, and the deaths of two of his caravan leaders, Stanley trudged toward Ujiji on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, where a sick and weak older white man was rumored to reside. The journey lasted 236 days. On the morning of 3 November, with an American flag flying on a pole, Stanley led his remaining fifty-four men down a mountain toward a lake and his historic meeting with Dr. Livingstone. [ map of the expedition ] Stanley’s dispatch about the event took eight months to reach the coast by messenger. From Zanzibar it traveled to Bombay, where it was telegraphed to London, then relayed to New York. On 2 July 1872 the front page of the New York Herald informed the world that Livingstone had been found. With Stanley’s care and attention, Livingstone regained his strength, and the pair spent four months together, bonding almost as father and son. Stanley returned to Europe to a hero’s welcome, though he had to contend with accusations that the Livingstone letters and journals he brought back were forgeries; members of the Royal Geographical Society wanted to ignore the American who had found “their man” in Africa.

But he received the gratitude of Livingstone’s family and official thanks from Queen Victoria. The public’s appetite for his published story was voracious. When word of Livingstone’s death came in 1874, the New York Herald and London’s Daily Telegraph teamed to send Stanley back to Africa as the “ambassador of two great powers.” In command of an “army of peace and light,” he would solve the remaining problems of the geography of central Africa and investigate and report on the haunts of slave traders Undated cabinet card photograph of Henry Morton Stanley with Kalulu, the African boy he “adopted” as his gun bearer and servant. In 1877 Stanley christened the site of the boy’s death on the Congo River Kalulu Falls. It remains one of the few Stanley place-names that has not been changed. [Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Manuscripts Division] Zanzibar. East Coast Africa . Nov 11th 1874 Emotional letter written by Stanley to his American publisher, J.

Blair Scribner, on the eve of his second expedition “through the Dark Continent.” Despite his misgivings about Africa and its dangers, Stanley was wrong about his prospects: he would live thirty more years, his New York “fellow” Blair, only five.[Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Manuscripts Division] Back in Zanzibar in September 1874, Stanley began quickly organizing his expedition. The procession that departed from Bagamoyo (Tanzania) on 17 November 1874 stretched for more than half a mile and included dozens of men carrying sections of the Lady Alice, the boat named for his seventeen-year-old fiancée, with which Stanley intended to explore Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and Livingstone’s Lualaba River.

During the next two and a half years, the expedition would struggle in temperatures reaching as high as 138 degrees; the powerful Emperor Mtesa of Uganda and the Wanyoro chief Mirambo would consume a great deal of Stanley’s time and test his diplomatic skills; he would have to negotiate with a notorious Arab ivory and slave trader named Tippu-Tib for safe passage of his men through the great rain forest; and he and his men would fight more than thirty skirmishes and battles on land and water against hostile tribes. The geographic prizes Stanley achieved on this expedition were unparalleled. (See the two Stanley maps.) He spent almost two months circumnavigating Lake Victoria, confirming that the only outlet was at Ripon Falls and hence establishing for good, he thought, the source of the Nile. He scouted Lake Albert, then moved south and west to Lake Tanganyika, which he also circumnavigated, proving it had no connection with Lake Albert. Stanley then solved the remaining geographical puzzle, determining that the Lualaba was not part of the Niger or Nile rivers but ultimately flowed into the Congo.

He reached the Atlantic Ocean on 9 August 1877, after a journey of more than seven thousand miles, in utter exhaustion. Back in London, he learned that Alice had not waited for him. Between 1879 and 1884, Stanley secretly helped King Leopold II of Belgium establish and “claim” the Congo Free State by creating commercial stations along the Congo River (Vivi, Léopoldville, Kinshassa). (Belgium’s rule would be marked by incredible brutality and the exploitation of the native population in order to extract ivory and rubber.) Because he taught his men how to wield a sledgehammer effectively, Stanley received the title of Bula Matari, “breaker of rocks,” from the Vivi chiefs. And there would be a final, high-profile mission in Africa for the explorer: the rescue of Emin Pasha, the German-born physician and naturalist, then governor of the Egyptian province of Equatoria in southern Sudan and under siege by Sudanese led by a Muslim mystic known as the Mahdi.

This 1887-1889 expedition went up the Congo, through unexplored deep jungle, to Lake Albert, then south, around Lake Victoria and onward to the coast with the reluctantly rescued Emin Pasha, ending in Zanzibar. Amid numerous disasters and much loss of life, Stanley discovered Lake Edward and the snow-capped Ruwenzori range of mountains, Ptolemy’s “Mountains of the Moon.” In 1895, Stanley was elected to the House of Commons and later retired with his wife, Dolly Tennant, to a country estate in Surrey, where he died at the age of sixty-three. Stanley’s desire to rest beside Dr. Livingstone in Westminster Abbey was thwarted by the dean of the church, who felt such an honor was unsuitable for a man who had “blood on his hands.” An auction of the explorer’s huge collection of artifacts, objects, and books took place in London in October[September?] 2002.

Not unexpectedly, the top-selling item was the water-stained map, with his handwritten notes, that Stanley had used on his 1874-1877 expedition across the heart of Africa and down the uncharted Congo River. Henry Morton Stanley, 1841-1904 Henry Morton Stanley Biography (Explorer/Journalist) Best known as: Explorer of Africa Name at birth: John Rowlands Born into poverty, John Rowlands left Wales and in 1858 arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he took the name Henry Stanley. He fought as a Confederate in the U.S. Civil War, was captured, then fought on the Union side. As a journalist, he was dispatched from New York to Asia Minor and to the American West, and then assigned to Africa to find the missing explorer David Livingstone . Stanley found Livingstone, and is famous for having said "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" upon meeting him. Stanley's subsequent explorations of Africa and his many books and articles made him an international celebrity.

Although he is considered by many to be one of the 19th century's greatest explorers, Stanley has also been accused of being complicit in King Leopold II's murderous pillage of the Congo. Copyright © 1998-2017 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved. Advertisement Advertisement

Question: Henry Morton Stanley was born in which country?
Answer: Wales