Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

by Tim Jeal

  SIXTEEN

  A Colony for a King

  To have solved almost all the greatest geographical questions connected with central Africa in a single journey posed an insoluble problem for the thirty-six-year-old Stanley. Unless he were to transfer his future operations to the arctic and polar regions, the planet had no comparable challenges left to offer. Yet he genuinely felt that doing something beneficial for the areas he had discovered was a perfectly worthwhile way to spend the rest of his life. Bearing in mind his extraordinary talent for exploration, there is, even so, something rather sad about the world's greatest explorer, with his transatlantic dislike of English snobbery and formality (mocked by him as `full dress, sword and knickerbockers'), donning evening dress every night and telling audiences in the town halls, theatres and winter gardens of thirty towns and cities to urge the British government to recognize the Congo's potential and get involved.'

  For the first time, Britain's manufacturers were feeling the heat of international competition, so what they needed (as these audiences were surprised to be told by a man with an American accent) was `a second India' to absorb the cloth of Lancashire's mills and the hardware of Sheffield's and Birmingham's factories. And thanks to his discoveries along the Congo, this diminutive `American' told them, British traders could steam right up this great river and make contact with a population of 43,000,000 people ready and eager to pay for manufactured goods with Africa's fabulous raw materials.' Though unaware that his population figure was massively exaggerated, Henry's audiences knew very well from his recently published Through the Dark Continent that the Congo contained not just useful raw materials but impassable cataracts, tropical diseases and cannibals.

  Wherever Stanley spoke, Kadu, Mutesa's page, sat beside him. A manager at an electro-plating works in Birmingham recalled the explorer's kindly way of explaining everything to the boy in Swahili, and was surprised to find Stanley `a much less bouncing person than is generally thought - rather quiet and reserved in fact, & his regard for Livingstone is pathetically filial'.' Indeed, at this time Livingstone was frequently in Stanley's thoughts - most often in connection with the expedition he had taken to the Zambezi in 11858, equipped with steamers, a prefabricated trading station, and scientists to assess the Zambezi basin's mineral and agricultural potential. It was now Stanley's dream that the British government might send him on a similar venture to the Congo. But - as he must have known - Britain would never back `an American' against a native-born Briton. So why could he still not bring himself to admit that he was British?

  The perfect chance for doing this had presented itself shortly after his return, when he had been berated for carrying the Union Jack on his travels.4 Yet instead of claiming it as his own, he had resorted to fiction, saying that the conveniently dead Pococks had persuaded him to let them carry their nation's flag. Yet despite feeling in his heart `as much British as my Lord Mayor of London', he believed that by taking the American oath of allegiance during the Civil War, he had given up his British nationality, and now feared exposing himself to the risks and disclosures involved in the bureaucratic process of naturalization.' So many problems could embarrass him: his assumption of another man's name, with no evidence to support an adoption; his illegitimacy and real name of Rowlands; his mother's unscrupulous use of an admission of British birth to elbow her family's way into his life again; and to cap it all, his desertion from both the US army and navy. Since Home Office inquiries might reveal all of this, he imagined he had no choice but to remain American, to the great detriment of his attempts to sell Africa to his true fellow countrymen. It was like a terrifying cautionary tale about the dangers of lying - and no less tragic for all that.

  In October 11878, four months after first meeting King Leopold II, Stanley reluctantly accepted that the Belgian monarch was the only person likely to send him back to Africa. Yet even after agreeing on 3 October to serve Leopold for five years, the explorer went on trying, throughout November and December, to persuade `Englishmen ... that some day they would regret not taking action [over the Congo]'. And Stanley made these efforts despite being warned by the king's contact man, Baron Greindl, `to say nothing to incite [British] people to undertake something on the Congo'. So the picture of Stanley, the workhouse boy, being easily and rapidly seduced by the wiles and wealth of the sinister Belgian monarch has no basis in fact.'

  Nor in 1878 did Henry have any means of knowing what the king's real intentions were. Certainly, no royal servant was going to be rash enough to tell him that Leopold wanted to own the Congo basin as his private possession. Instead, Henry had every reason to admire the king. At this date even the secretary of the Aborigines' Protection Society thought well of Leopold's `crusade' to open Africa to commerce and to extinguish the slave trade, which he had announced at the Brussels Geographical Conference. The fact that Leopold seemed ready to spend his own money on what Ferdinand de Lesseps - the builder of the Suez Canal - called `the most humanitarian work of this century' gave the king chivalric status throughout Europe.7 Even Auguste Lam- bermont, secretary-general of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, believed that Leopold was `not thinking about procuring a colony ...'.8 So Stanley, the outsider, could hardly have known better. Nor did it worry him when he received letters from Baron Greindl advising him to keep quiet about going to Africa as the king's employee.9 After all, France and Portugal might imagine their own African interests threatened by the king's philanthropic plans.

  King Leopold II of Belgium

  Stanley first met the king in Brussels on ro June 11878, having been brought from the railway station in central Brussels to his palace at Laeken, outside the city, in a royal carriage." Henry was not overwhelmed by the king's grandeur, despite finding Leopold a `charming' and impressive figure with his `fine brown beard' and enviable height of six feet five inches." He was dismayed to find that the king did not believe, as he did, that building a railway from Matadi to Stanley Pool should be given priority.12 When Leopold spoke of wanting to establish a series of posts linking East Africa with the Upper Congo, Stanley countered that it was much more important to build trading stations on the Congo and a railway by-passing the cataracts. To date, three AIA expeditions to East Africa, all inspired by the king, had resulted in the foundation of a single small station on Lake Tanganyika at the cost of many lives.13

  Far from being overawed, Stanley fought his corner, and by midNovember 1878 had managed to persuade Leopold to concentrate on the Congo.14 In this month Henry finally signed a five-year contract with the Belgian king, having at last accepted that the British government would never back him. His salary would be £r,ooo per annum - by no means large - with £zo,ooo available for the expedition itself for the first year, and £8,ooo annually thereafter. Henry was not to be allowed to lecture or to publish anything without the king's permission, so his annual income was going to be less than when he had been a journalist and author. It has been claimed that Stanley was in fact paid £z,ooo per year and received two years' pay in advance, but the evidence for this is flimsy.'5

  To finance Stanley's expedition and associated developments, Leopold set up a syndicate with a capital of r,ooo,ooo francs, and a committee to run it - the Comite d'Etudes du Haut Congo. Its objective was defined by Leopold as the establishment of stations for scientific, philanthropic and commercial purposes on the Congo. A sum of 40,000 francs was voted for the expedition's first steam launch, with further vessels being promised for a later date.i6 Apart from the king, subscribers included James Hutton, the head of a Manchester firm trading in West Africa, William MacKinnon, Stanley's shipping millionaire friend, and, a little later, Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Stanley had encouraged these British subscribers to invest, hoping that they might ultimately build up a majority shareholding and win control of the syndicate. Although the king and a Dutch company, the Africaansche Handelsvereeniging, held most of the shares, the religious MacKinnon and the philanthropic Burdett-Coutts were confident that Leopold's scheme would benefit
the Congolese by giving them `legitimate' commerce. None of these investors seemed alarmed that a philanthropic body had now acquired the powers of a commercial undertaking. After all, why shouldn't philanthropy on such an epic scale reduce its costs to some extent?

  On io December Henry signed a three-year contract with the Comite, independent of his five-year contract with the king." At this point the Dutch company - the largest investor, apart from Leopold - went bankrupt. This did not worry the king, who promptly proposed a new scheme to his fellow subscribers. They would not be asked for more money since he would provide the new capital, but he would only do this on condition that the Comite was dissolved and he took control of the entire enterprise. The other subscribers accepted their reduced role with a good grace, because Leopold had taken on all the risk of the venture." Nobody told Stanley that the Comte had ceased to exist - quite the contrary, since the compliant Colonel Maximilien Strauch, the new secretary-general of the AIA, usually wrote to Henry as if from the defunct Comite. The king soon named its successor organization as the International Association of the Congo, the AIC - a name deliberately chosen so people would confuse it with the AIA, the original, genuinely multi-national league of philanthropists and geographers created at the Brussels Conference.'9 In the meantime, Stanley was told by Henry Sanford - the king's American friend and occasional business partner - that Leopold meant to `bring back the expedition to the purely philanthropic character [Stanley] had suggested at the outset'."

  When these devious corporate developments took place, Stanley was at the mouth of the Congo, about to start his expedition and in no position to find out whether the Comite, the AIC and the AIA were fictions concealing Leopold's control of everything. Yet busy though he was, he had noticed something suspicious. As he steamed through the muddy green water of the great river's estuary and gazed at the reddish cliffs of the continent where he might shortly die, he wrote in his diary:

  The King is a clever statesman - he is supremely clever but I have not had thirty opportunities of conversing with him without penetrating his motives. I am supposed to be an American, and he has been more open than he would have been had I appeared as a British subject. Still he has not been as frank as to tell me outright what we are to strive for. Nevertheless it has become pretty evident that under the guise of an International Association he hopes to make a Belgian dependency of the Congo basin.2'

  The idea that Leopold might hope to own the Congo as his own private possession had not entered Henry's head. A few months later he would remind Colonel Strauch, the king's mouthpiece, `we are here charged to perform a task which I believe is a sacred one'.22 That Stanley was returning to Africa with an almost Livingstonian sense of mission is clear from a letter he wrote to Henry Sanford: `I propose to do my best to open up the valley of the mighty African river to the world's commerce or die in the attempt.' If anyone had told him at that moment that, far from wanting the Congo to be open to the competition of `the world's commerce', the king meant to (and actually one day would) close it to free trade and set up a royal monopoly over the entire basin, Stanley would have resigned rather than risk his life in such a cause."

  Henry was inclined to think that even if Leopold did have colonial ambitions, they were unlikely to be realized. In Strauch's office he had seen a map of the Congo on the wall with the proposed stations marked in red. Any visitor could see this. `The Belgians strike me as being a peculiarly innocent people,' Stanley commented. The Dutch and the Portuguese would not stand idly by if they thought Leopold's real purpose was to take away their trade.14 The cruel fact was that Belgium was a small country, which was likely, in the end, to be forced out by other nations. So, whatever plans Leopold might have in mind, Stanley believed that he himself could still succeed in his personal 'mission of sowing along the Congo's banks civilized settlements'. If the king were to be elbowed out by more powerful nations, Henry's great hope was that Britain might still pick up the pieces. But for the present, he was happy to serve his royal master. Meanwhile, Henry was indispensable to Leopold. `We must equip Stanley from top to toe,' the king told Colonel Strauch, `and give him staff and supplies in abundance, otherwise we are lost.'L5

  To be returning to a camp-fire existence, far from civilization, did not dismay Stanley, despite its dangers. In England, his loveless social life had mainly consisted of meetings with geographers, journalists, businessmen and politicians. And even in Paris, where his admiring friend Edward King and other Americans had founded the Stanley Club, to give their hero a banquet every time he visited, Henry had been moody and lethargic. So in August 1879, steaming up the Congo with his small flotilla of boats, he felt no nostalgia for what he called `the vanities of life a la mode'. Instead, he wrote: `I am devoured with a wish to set foot upon terra-firma once more and begin my duties.'26

  His sense of purpose was buttressed by the presence of his recently arrived Wangwana followers - his African family. In March he had visited Zanzibar and shipped sixty-one of them to West Africa, with eight more to follow. These men included Uledi -'my own dear, brave & faithful Uledi', and Susi, Livingstone's longest-serving companion, who had led the party to the coast bearing the doctor's body in 11873. Wadi Rehani, Stanley's incomparable storekeeper, had volunteered, as well as Soudi - a miraculous survivor of the cataracts and of the battle against the Wanyaturu. The young Mabruki Ndogo, a favourite gun-bearer, was another volunteer. About three-quarters of the others had served in one or other of his expeditions, and a significant number had served in both - a fact eloquently rebutting Kirk's charge that Stanley had been brutal to them. 17 Stanley made signing his contract with Leopold dependent on the king's promise to set aside £z,8oo for shipping the Wangwana home at the end of their period of service.z8

  They sailed for the Congo in the steamship Albion, under the eye of Anthony Bannister Swinburne, the Christ's Hospital boy whom Stanley had taken to the Gold Coast in 18 74, and who was twenty-one now.' 9 Swinburne had engineered his employment on the Congo by writing a fan letter to Stanley after his trans-Africa triumph and Henry had been unable to resist the youth's humble admiration.j° At first as his secretary, and later as a station chief, Anthony would be one of the very few whites to be close to Stanley on this station-building expedition.

  Another highly valued assistant was a remarkable Somali youth, Qualla Idris, who had boarded Stanley's ship at Aden in search of a job, when Stanley had been en route to Zanzibar. Qualla - more often known as Dualla - was the son of Aden's chief of police and had recently been a cabin boy on an American ship, and then coachman to a Brooklyn businessman. He spoke English, Swahili and two other East African dialects, and Stanley had sensed on meeting him that he possessed extraordinary charm and would prove `a valuable acquisi tion to me in my dealings with chiefs'.31 Two robust Danish seamen in their twenties - not unlike the Pococks - also found favour. They were Albert Christophersen, a particular favourite, and Martin Martinsen.

  From the start Stanley needed, as well as his few favourites, a dozen more whites to man and maintain his launches and occupy his trading stations when built. These included three Belgian ships' engineers, who complained constantly about their wages and resigned within a couple of months.32 An English replacement engineer died of fever, but an Italian, Francesco Flamini, survived to win everyone's admiration. Engineers were vital for the maintenance of the expedition's four steam launches.33

  The expedition's dependable chief of stores, the American Augustus Sparhawk, had first met Stanley in 118711 on Zanzibar, where he had worked for a Boston trading firm. His juniors, two Englishmen - J. Kirkbright and A. H. Moore - failed to acclimatize, one dying and the other resigning. From the beginning Stanley warned the elegantly moustachioed Colonel Strauch that his present workforce of 1124 (69 Wangwana and the rest West Africans engaged at the coast) was only half of what he needed for his road and station-building.

  On zr August 11879, Stanley's steamers began the rro-mile journey up the wide, brown river, between `dark walls of m
angrove intermixed with palm fronds'. This first phase would take them almost to the Yellala Falls, and the start of the chain of rapids that stretched to Stanley Pool. At Boma the following day, Stanley described its history as `two centuries of pitiless persecution of black men by sordid whites'. Henry developed a keen dislike of Portuguese traders, and wanted his first station `to be as far as possible from the wretched rum drinkers & rum sellers of the Lower Congo'.34 To do anything else would be `to invite debauchery & vile orgies which I cannot calmly contemplate as possible in any place under my command'.35

  Stanley aimed to find a place on the river just below the start of the falls, where he would build his first station and start his road to the Pool. On 26 September, not far from Yellala, Stanley was delighted to encounter Chief Dedede of Nsanda, who had befriended him in 11877 on his way to Boma. Dedede now recommended a place called Vivi, and persuaded local chiefs to let Stanley build there. Though this site had the advantage of being at the highest point of navigation on the Lower Congo, its landing place was only 300 yards long, and the elevated plateau, on which the settlement would have to be built, was narrower than Stanley would have liked.

  Now some sort of treaty, or lease, would have to be agreed with the chiefs. In his book about the expedition, Stanley would exaggerate the number and scope of treaties he signed between 11879 and 11884, leaving himself open to claims by historians that he had bought from uncomprehending African rulers all their land for a few trifling bits of cloth, effectively stealing their country for Leopold's benefit.;6 This is a travesty of the truth. [For the full facts, see Chapter Nineteen.]