Stanley, Sir Henry Morton

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Stanley, Sir Henry Morton (1841–1904). The most effective, if ruthless, of the 19th-cent. explorers of Africa, Stanley was born in a Welsh workhouse but became a journalist in the USA. Sent to Africa by the New York Herald, in October 1871, he uttered the immortal words ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume’ on finding the explorer at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. In 1874–7 he led a well-financed expedition across the continent which solved nearly all the remaining puzzles of Africa's basic geography, including the course of the Zaïre (Congo) river. Engaged by King Leopold, he established the beginnings of the Congo Free State in 1879–84 and then, from 1886 to 1889, led what was a great imperialist as well as exploratory expedition through the forbidding Ituri Forest to link up Leopold's state with the Upper Nile region, thought to be held by Emin Pasha. The venture was an epic of determination on Stanley's part, but created controversy and scandal because of Stanley's methods and his high-handed attitude to his companions.

Roy C. Bridges

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