British Scholar: Holiday Season 2007-08 Book of the Month

Review by:
Bryan Glass
University of Texas at Austin

Holiday Season 2007-08

Book of the Month

Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer
Tim Jeal, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 570 pages

When most people today think of Henry Morton Stanley, they mainly remember his
famous question “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Out-shadowed by Livingstone,
Stanley often remains forgotten by most of the world as one of the major explorers of
the nineteenth century. Those who do study exploration usually view Stanley as a
cruel, domineering imperialist who would do anything necessary to achieve his
overarching goal of opening the heart of central Africa to western exploitation. Tim
Jeal’s new biography of Stanley aims to reverse the perception of Stanley while
introducing him to a wider public unaware of his vast contributions to exploration and
globalization.

Jeal’s unlimited access to Stanley’s documents gives the reader a glimpse into his
disadvantaged upbringing and his lifelong desire to gain acceptance and, perhaps
most importantly, love. Henry Morton Stanley grew up in a humble background.
Stanley was born John Rowlands in Wales to an unwed mother. He spent his first
five years living with his grandfather. Jeal claims that these were happy years.
When his grandfather died, John found himself in a Welsh workhouse because both
his mother and father rejected their bastard son and refused to provide him with a
home. John left Britain for the United States and a chance to reinvent himself when
he turned eighteen. By 1867, after having fought in the Civil War, first for the South
and later for the North after being taken prisoner, John began his career as a full-
time journalist with the Missouri Democrat in early 1867. Concurrently, John was
busy indulging his need for adventure and hoping to secure funding for an expedition
within Africa. On 16 December 1867 Henry Stanley, the name he adopted while in
the United States to distance himself from his workhouse upbringing, waltzed into the
offices of the New York Herald for a meeting with its proprietor James Gordon
Bennett Jr. He left the meeting with an agreement that he would write freelance
articles for Bennett in Africa, and if they were well-received, a permanent position
would follow. Stanley’s tenacity and speed in telegraphing information to Bennett
about Britain’s war with Theodore, Emperor of Ethiopia, so impressed the press
baron that he offered Stanley a permanent post with the paper. Henry’s larger goal
of finding Dr. David Livingstone, the great British explorer of central Africa who had
been out of contact with the western world for many years, now appeared closer to
reality.

In January 1871, after over two years of preparation, Stanley arrived in Zanzibar to
begin his long-awaited quest to find Dr. Livingstone. Stanley’s meeting with
Livingstone at Ujiji on the eastern banks of Lake Tanganyika in early November 1871
has captured the imagination of generations not for the hardships Stanley endured
to find the great missionary doctor but for the phrase the former used to greet the
latter. Stanley’s “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” first appeared in the New York Herald
on 2 July 1872 and brought both participants everlasting fame. Stanley would use
this fame to write the book How I Found Livingstone, which changed the perception
of the western world towards the doctor. Stanley portrayed Livingstone as a saint,
although his diary entries on the same encounter show the doctor as a completely
different man incapable of forgiveness and with a vindictive streak. Immediately
following the great discovery of Livingstone, Stanley decided that his true passion in
life was to be an explorer and not a journalist.

Stanley’s expedition to find Livingstone provided him with the financial backing and
celebrity to arrange his great journey through the middle of Africa, in which he
confirmed that Lake Victoria was the source of the Nile and the Lualaba River fed the
Congo. The success of this mission would lead to Leopold II of Belgium’s infamous
interest and eventual takeover of the Congo for his own personal gain, but at the
time, according to Jeal, Stanley saw his journey as a boon for science and part of the
greater "white man's mission" to bring civilization to the “barbarous” tribes of the
continent while helping to end the slave trade. Stanley’s journey to rescue Emin
Pasha is also outlined by Jeal in detail and the facts of this expedition also work to
change the widely-held perception of Stanley as a cruel imperialist. In outlining these
expeditions, Jeal presents voluminous information to show Stanley’s compassion for
Africans and their continent and his utter disregard for European high society and its
leaders. Stanley obviously held paternalistic beliefs towards Africans, but given that
he was a product of the Victorian era his egalitarian treatment towards every member
of his various expeditions proves surprising.

The complicated yet marvelous life of Henry Morton Stanley makes for an epic
biography. Jeal’s unfettered access to the Stanley archives in Brussels provided the
author with a golden opportunity to tell the real story about his maligned subject.
Jeal does not disappoint. This is a fine biography that should be on the reading list
of anyone interested in exploration, Africa, or the British Empire. Jeal deserves the
highest praise for bringing his character to life in this captivating read. Hopefully,
Stanley will now be able to emerge from the shadow cast over him by years of verbal
and written abuse from uninformed critics. The real Stanley emerges in this book
and he is a man to be respected if not admired.