IV.

Explorer-for-Hire

Leopold offered Stanley employment as soon as the explorer reached Europe, but Stanley needed rest and preferred to work for the interests of Britain. When Stanley found the British less interested in developing and colonizing Central Africa, he returned to the Congo under Leopold’s sponsorship in 1879. For the next five years Stanley worked to open the lower Congo to commerce, constructing a road from the lower river to Stanley Pool (now Pool Malebo), where the river became navigable. This work earned him the African nickname Bula Matari, or “breaker of rocks,” an epithet that also aptly reflected his ruthless tendencies. He obtained treaties with local leaders recognizing the authority of the International Association of the Congo, a supposedly philanthropic organization that Leopold founded and headed. Stanley found himself competing in treaty gathering with French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, who was staking French claims in the region. This competition helped bring about the Berlin West Africa Conference, between 1884 and 1885, in which major colonial powers met to sort out competing claims in Africa. Because of Stanley’s efforts, Leopold obtained rights to what was called the Congo Free State, which occupied most of the Congo Basin. Stanley wrote about his work for Leopold in The Congo and the Founding of the Free State (1885).

Stanley next became interested in furthering British imperial aims in East Africa. He sought to do so by leading an expedition to relieve Mehmed Emin Pasha, a local governor in the Egyptian Sudan, and expanding British claims in the region. Emin had been cut off from Egypt since 1883 by a revolt led by Muhammad Ahmad, an Islamic holy man known as the Mahdi. This difficult trip, which took up most of 1888 and 1889, brought Stanley through lands no European had visited. Stanley reached Emin near Lake Albert in April 1888, but found him unwilling at first to evacuate. Stanley obtained treaties with African leaders in the region that enhanced British claims in what would become British East Africa, and by 1889 persuaded Emin to pull out. On their way to the Indian Ocean coast, Stanley sighted the Ruwenzori Range and determined that the Semliki River linked Lake Albert to Lake Edward. Stanley wrote of these exploits in his book In Darkest Africa (1890).