Editing Henry Morton Stanley (section)

==Controversies==
===Overview===
Having survived for ten years of his childhood in the [[workhouse]] at [[St Asaph]], it is postulated that he needed as a young man to be thought of as harder and more formidable than other explorers. This made him exaggerate punishments and hostile encounters. It was a serious error of judgement for which his reputation continues to pay a heavy price.<ref name="jeal2007" /> In the conclusion to his account of a fight with a fellow boy while in the workhouse, Stanley remarked, "Often since have I learned how necessary is the application of force for the establishment of order. There comes a time when pleading is of no avail."<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Stanley|first1=Henry M. (Henry Morton)|url=http://archive.org/details/autobiographyofs00stanrich|title=The autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley|last2=Stanley|first2=Dorothy|date=1911|publisher=Boston : Houghton Mifflin|others=University of California Libraries}}</ref> He was accused of indiscriminate cruelty against Africans by contemporaries, which included men who served under him or otherwise had first-hand information.<ref name=":1" /> Stanley himself acknowledged, "Many people have called me hard, but they are always those whose presence a field of work could best dispense with, and whose nobility is too nice to be stained with toil."<ref name="Glave1892">{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hoELAAAAIAAJ | last=Glave | first=E. J. | year=1892 | title=In Savage Africa; or, Six Years of Adventure in Congo-Land | location=New York  | publisher=R. H. Russell & Son}}</ref>

About society women, Stanley wrote that they were "toys to while slow time" and "trifling human beings."<ref name="Zabus2013"/> When he met the American journalist and traveller [[May French Sheldon|May Sheldon]], he was attracted because she was a modern woman who insisted on serious conversation and not social chit-chat. "She soon lets you know that chaff won't do," he wrote.<ref name="Reddall1890">{{cite book|last=Reddall|first=Henry Frederic |title=Henry M. Stanley: A Record of His Early Life and Struggles|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jPmmGAAACAAJ|year=1890|publisher=R. Bonner's Sons|page=21}}</ref><ref name="Middleton1965">{{cite book|last=Middleton|first=Dorothy|title=Victorian Lady Travellers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PJ8SAQAAIAAJ|year=1965|publisher=Academy |location=Chicago|isbn=9780897330633|chapter=Ch IV |author-link=Dorothy Middleton}}</ref> The authors of the book ''The Congo: Plunder and Resistance'' tried to argue that Stanley had "a pathological fear of women, an inability to work with talented co-workers, and an obsequious love of the aristocratic rich,"<ref name="Plunder">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IuPjmBB-gmsC | first1=David | last1=Renton | first2=David | last2=Seddon | first3=Leo | last3=Zeilig | title=The Congo: Plunder and Resistance | publisher=Zed Books | location=London | year=2007 | isbn=978-1842774854}}</ref> This is not only at odds with his opinions about society women, but Stanley's intimate correspondence in the [[Royal Museum for Central Africa|Royal Museum of Central Africa]], between him and his two fiancées, Katie Gough Roberts and [[Alice Pike Barney|Alice Pike]], as well as between him and the American journalist [[May Sheldon]], and between him and his wife [[Dorothy Tennant]], shows that he enjoyed close relationships with those women,<ref name="jeal2007"/><ref name="Imperial">{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0qKyxaJMVF0C | title=Imperial Footprints: Henry Morton Stanley's African Journeys | last=Newman | first=James L. | publisher=Potomac Books, Inc. | date=2004 | location=Washington, D. C.| isbn=9781574885972 }}</ref> but both Roberts and [[Alice Pike Barney|Pike]] ultimately rejected him when he refused to abandon his protracted travels.<ref name="Zabus2013">{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_GPlAgAAQBAJ | title=Out in Africa: Same-Sex Desire in Sub-Saharan Literatures & Cultures | last=Zabus | first=Chantal | publisher=Boydell & Brewer Ltd. | date=2013 | isbn=9781847010827 }}</ref><ref>Alice Pike to Stanley 17 November 1877; also 28, 13 Oct Nov and 4 December 1874; for Katie Gough Roberts see Jeal, 87–88.</ref>

When Stanley married [[Dorothy Tennant|Dorothy]], he invited his friend, [[Arthur Jephson|Arthur Mounteney Jephson]], to visit while they were on their honeymoon. Dr. Thomas Parke also came because Stanley was seriously ill at the time. Stanley's good relations with these two colleagues from the [[Emin Pasha Relief Expedition|Emin Pasha Expedition]] could possibly be seen as demonstrating that he could get along with colleagues.<ref name="Zabus2013" /><ref name="jeal2007" />

===General opinion about African people===
[[File:The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition under attack Wellcome L0034831.jpg|thumb|Stanley's expedition under attack]]
In ''Through the Dark Continent'', Stanley observed the peoples of the region, and wrote that "the savage only respects force, power, boldness, and decision".{{sfn|Stanley|1878|p=216}} Stanley further wrote: "If Europeans will only&nbsp;... study human nature in the vicinity of Stanley Pool (Kinshasa), they will go home thoughtful men, and may return again to this land to put to good use the wisdom they should have gained&nbsp;... during their peaceful sojourn."{{sfn|Stanley|1885|p=394}}

In ''How I Found Livingstone'' (1872), he wrote that he was "prepared to admit any black man possessing the attributes of true manhood, or any good qualities&nbsp;... to a brotherhood with myself."{{sfn|Stanley | 1872|p=10}}

Stanley insulted and shouted at [[William Grant Stairs]] and [[Arthur Jephson]] for mistreating the Wangwana.<ref name="jeal2007" /> He described the history of [[Boma, Democratic Republic of the Congo|Boma]] as "two centuries of pitiless persecution of black men by sordid whites".<ref name="jeal2007" /> He also wrote about what he thought was the superior beauty of black people in comparison with whites.<ref name="jeal2007" />{{sfn|Stanley|1885|pp=80, 96}} According to Jeal, Stanley was not a racist, unlike his contemporaries [[Sir Richard Burton]] and [[Sir Samuel Baker]].<ref name="jeal2007" />{{rp|10–11}}

===Opinion about mixed African-Arab peoples===
The Wangwana of Zanzibar were of [[Afro-Arab|mixed Arabian and African ancestry]]: "Africanized Arabs", in Stanley's words. They became the backbone of all his major expeditions and were referred to as "his dear pets" by sceptical young officers on the Emin Pasha Expedition, who resented their leader for favouring the Wangwana above themselves. "All are dear to me", Stanley told William Grant Stairs and Arthur Jephson, "who do their duty and the Zanzibaris have quite satisfied me on this and on previous expeditions."<ref name="jeal2007" />{{rp|331}} Stanley came to think of an individual Wangwana as "superior in proportion to his wages to ten Europeans".<ref>Stanley to Strauch, 20 September 1880, RMCA.</ref> When Stanley first met a group of his Wangwana assistants, he was surprised: "They were an exceedingly fine looking body of men, far more intelligent in appearance than I could ever have believed African barbarians could be".{{sfn|Stanley|1872|p=30}}

On the other hand, in one of his books, Stanley said about mixed Afro-Arab people: "For the half-castes I have great contempt. They are neither black nor white, neither good nor bad, neither to be admired nor hated. They are all things, at all times&nbsp;... If I saw a miserable, half-starved negro, I was always sure to be told, he belonged to a half-caste. Cringing and hypocritical, cowardly and debased, treacherous and mean&nbsp;... this syphilitic, blear-eyed, pallid-skinned, abortion of an Africanized Arab."{{sfn|Stanley|1872|p=6}}

===Accounts of cruel treatment toward African people===
The [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|British House of Commons]] appointed a committee to investigate missionary reports of Stanley's mistreatment of native populations in 1871, which was likely secured by [[Horace Waller (activist)|Horace Waller]], a member on the committee of the [[Anti-Slavery International|Anti-slavery Society]] and fellow of the [[Royal Geographical Society]]. The British vice consul in Zanzibar, [[John Kirk (explorer)|John Kirk]] (Waller's brother-in-law) conducted the investigation. Stanley was charged with excessive violence, wanton destruction, the selling of labourers into slavery, the sexual exploitation of native women and the plundering of villages for ivory and canoes. Kirk's report to the [[Foreign and Commonwealth Office|British Foreign Office]] was never published, but in it, he claimed: "If the story of this expedition were known it would stand in the annals of African discovery unequalled for the reckless use of power that modern weapons placed in his hands over natives who never before heard a gun fired."<ref>{{Cite news|last=Waweru|first=Daniel|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/aug/31/stanley-doesnt-merit-statue|title=Stanley doesn't merit a statue {{!}} Daniel Waweru|date=31 August 2010|newspaper=The Guardian|access-date=21 February 2020|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> When Kirk was appointed to investigate reports of brutality against Stanley, he was delighted because he had hated Stanley for almost a decade. Firstly, for having publicly exposed him (Kirk) for having failed to send provisions to Livingstone from Zanzibar during the late 1860s; secondly, because Stanley had revealed in the press that Kirk had sent slaves to David Livingstone as porters, rather than the free men Livingstone had made very plain he wanted.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jeal|first=Tim|title=Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer|publisher=Faber & Faber|year=2007|location=London|pages=98–99}}</ref> Kirk was related to Horace Waller by marriage; and so Waller also hated Stanley on Kirk's behalf.<ref>Waller to Livingstone, 12 August 1872, Rhodes House, Oxford.</ref> He used his membership of the executive committee of the Universities Mission to Central Africa to persuade [[John Farler|J. P. Farler]] (a missionary in East Africa) to name Stanley's assistants who might provide evidence against the explorer and be prepared to be interviewed by Kirk in Zanzibar.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jeal|first=Tim|title=Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer|publisher=Faber & Faber|year=2007|location=London|pages=227}}</ref> An American merchant in Zanzibar, Augustus Sparhawk, wrote that several of Stanley's African assistants, including Manwa Sera, "a big rascal and too fond of money", had been bribed to tell Kirk what he wanted to hear.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hall|first=Richard|title=Stanley:An Adventurer Explored|publisher=Collins|year=1974|location=London|pages=245–6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Bierman|first=John|title=Dark Safari: The Life Behind the Legend of Henry Morton Stanley|publisher=Knopf|year=1990|location=New York|pages=223}}</ref> Stanley was accused, in Kirk's report, of cruelty to his Wangwana carriers and guards whom he idolised and who re-enlisted with him again and again. He wrote to the owner of the ''Daily Telegraph'', insisting that he (Lawson) force the [[Government of the United Kingdom|British government]] to send a warship to take the Wangwana home to Zanzibar and to pay all their back wages. If a ship was not sent, they would die on their overland journey home. The ship was sent.<ref>Stanley to Edward Levy-Lawson 17 August 1877 Russell Train Collection.</ref> Stanley's hatred of the promiscuity that had caused his illegitimacy and his legendary shyness with women, made the Kirk report's claim that he had accepted an African mistress offered to him by [[Muteesa I of Buganda|Kabaka Mutesa]] exceedingly implausible.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jeal|first=Tim|title=Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer|publisher=Faber & Faber|year=2007|location=London|pages=228}}</ref> Both Stanley and his colleague, Frank Pocock, loathed slavery and the slave trade and wrote about this loathing in letters and diaries at this time, which speaks against the likelihood that they sold their own men.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bennett|first=Norman R.|title=Stanley's Despatches to the New York Herald 1871-77|publisher=Boston University Press|year=1970|location=Boston|pages=317ff, 477ff}}</ref> The report was never shown to Stanley, so he had been unable to defend himself.<ref>J. Kirk to Lord Derby, 1 May 1878, F.O. 84/1514.</ref>

In a letter to the Secretary of the [[Royal Geographical Society]] in the 1870s, Conservative [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|MP]] and treasurer of the [[Aborigines' Protection Society]], [[Sir Robert Fowler, 1st Baronet|Sir Robert Fowler]], who believed Kirk's report and refused to "whitewash Stanley", insisted that his "heartless butchery of unfortunate natives has brought dishonour on the British flag and must have rendered the course of future travellers more perilous and difficult."<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Driver|first=Felix|title=Henry Morton Stanley and His Critics: Geography, Exploration and Empire|date=1 November 1991|url=https://academic.oup.com/past/article/133/1/134/1545461|journal=Past & Present|language=en|issue=133|pages=134–166|doi=10.1093/past/133.1.134|issn=0031-2746}}</ref>

General [[Charles George Gordon]] remarked in a letter to [[Richard Francis Burton]] that Stanley shared [[Samuel Baker]]'s tendency to write openly about deploying firearms against Africans in self-defense: "These things may be done, but not advertised",<ref name="Burton1897">{{cite book|last=Burton|first=Lady Isabel |author-link=Isabel Burton|editor-first=W. H. |editor-last=Wilkins|title=The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton: The Story of Her Life|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GTQMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA661|volume=2|year=1897|publisher=Dodd, Mead|location=New York|page=661}}</ref> Burton himself wrote that Stanley "shoots negros as if they were monkeys"<ref name="Hochschild1998" /><ref>{{Cite news|last=Lefort|first=Rebecca|date=25 July 2010|title=Row over statue of 'cruel' explorer Henry Morton Stanley|newspaper=The Daily Telegraph|location=London|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/congo/7908247/Row-over-statue-of-cruel-explorer-Henry-Morton-Stanley.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/congo/7908247/Row-over-statue-of-cruel-explorer-Henry-Morton-Stanley.html |archive-date=12 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="Bierman1993" /> in an October 1876 letter to Kirk. He also loathed Stanley for disproving his long-held theory that Lake Tanganyika, which he was the first European to discover, was the true source of the Nile, which may have influenced Burton to misrepresent Stanley's activities in Africa.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kennedy|first=Dane|title=The Highly Civilised Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World|year=2005|location=New York|pages=133}}</ref>

In 1877, not long after one of Stanley's expeditions, Farler met with African porters who had been part of the expedition and wrote, "Stanley's followers give dreadful accounts to their friends of the killing of inoffensive natives, stealing their ivory and goods, selling their captives, and so on. I do think a commission ought to inquire into these charges, because if they are true, it will do untold harm to the great cause of emancipating Africa&nbsp;... I cannot understand all the killing that Stanley has found necessary".<ref>Extract from a letter of the Rev. J. P. Farler, Magila, Zanzibar, 28 December 1877. FO 84/1527.</ref> Stanley, when reporting the [[American Indian Wars]] as a young reporter, had been encouraged by his editors to exaggerate the number of [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Indians]] killed by the [[United States Army|US Army]]. The legacy for Stanley, of being a helpless illegitimate boy, deserted by both parents, was a deep sense of inferiority that could only be kept at bay by claims of being much more powerful and feared than he was.<ref name="Jeal 2007 195–202">{{Cite book|last=Jeal|first=Tim|title=Stanley: The impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer|publisher=Faber & Faber|year=2007|location=London|pages=195–202}}</ref> Tim Jeal, in his biography of Stanley, has shown by a study of Stanley's diary and his colleague Frank Pocock's diary that on almost every occasion when there was conflict with Africans on the Congo in 1875–76, Stanley exaggerated the scale of the conflict and the deaths on both sides. On 14 February 1877, according to his colleague, Frank Pocock's diary, Stanley's nine canoes, and his sectional boat the ''Lady Alice'', were attacked and followed by eight canoes, crewed by Africans with firearms. In Stanley's book, ''Through the Dark Continent'', Stanley inflated this incident into a major battle, by increasing the number of hostile canoes to 60 and adjusting the casualties accordingly.<ref name="Jeal 2007 195–202"/>

Stanley wrote with some measure of satisfaction when describing how Captain [[John Hanning Speke]], the first European to visit Uganda, had been punched in the teeth for disobedience to [[Sidi Mubarak Bombay]], a caravan leader also employed by Stanley, which made Stanley claim that he would never allow Bombay to have the audacity to stand up for a boxing match with him.{{sfn|Stanley|1872|p=28}} In the same paragraph, Stanley described how he several months later administered punishment to the African.{{sfn|Stanley|1872|p=28}}<ref name="Jeal 2007 195–202"/>

[[William Grant Stairs]] found Stanley during the [[Emin Pasha Relief Expedition|Emin Pasha expedition]] to be cruel, secretive and selfish.<ref>{{Cite book|last=MacLaren|first=Roy D.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=925cbmVY-QUC|title=African Exploits: The Diaries of William Stairs, 1887–1892|publisher=McGill-Queen's Press|year=1998|page=i|isbn=9780773516403}}</ref> John Rose Troup, in his book about the Emin Pasha expedition, said that he saw Stanley's self-serving and vindictive side: "In the forgoing letter he brings forward disgraceful charges, that really do not refer to me at all, although he blames me for what happened. The injustice of his accusations, made as they are without documentary or, as far as I can learn, any evidence, can hardly be made clear to the public, but they must be aware, when they read what has preceded this correspondence, that he has acted as no one in his position should have acted".<ref>{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GVUMAAAAYAAJ | title=With Stanley's Rear Column | last=Troup | first=John Rose | year=1890 | page=302 | publisher=Chapman and Hall}}</ref><ref name="Jeal 2007 195–202"/>

By way of counterpoint, it may be noted that, in later in life, Stanley rebuked subordinates for inflicting needless corporal punishment. For beating one of his most trusted African servants, he told Lieutenant Carlos Branconnier "that cruelty was not permissible" and that he would dismiss him for a future offence, and he did.<ref>Stanley's Congo Diaries, 16 March 6 July 1881, RMCA.</ref><ref name="jeal2007" /> Stanley was admired by [[Arthur Jephson]], whom William Bonny, the acerbic medical assistant, described as the "most honourable" officer on the expedition.<ref>William Bonny Diary, 29 September 1888, RMCA.</ref> [[Arthur Jephson|Jephson]] wrote, "Stanley never fights where there is the smallest chance of making friends with the natives and he is wonderfully patient & long suffering with them".<ref name="Middleton2017">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c0ZBDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA386|title=The Diary of A.J. Mounteney Jephson: Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, 1887–1889|publisher=Taylor & Francis|year=2017|isbn=978-1-351-89161-5|editor-last=Middleton|editor-first=Dorothy|page=386}}</ref> Writer [[Tim Jeal]] has argued that during Stanley's 1871 expedition, he treated his indigenous porters well under "contemporary standards."<ref name="Tim Jeal">{{cite news|author=[[John Carey (critic)|John Carey]]|date=18 March 2007|title=A good man in Africa?|newspaper=[[The Sunday Times]]|location=London|url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/biography/article1513215.ece|access-date=15 November 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110517111609/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article1513215.ece|archive-date=17 May 2011}}</ref>

===Possible inspiration for ''Heart of Darkness''===
The legacy of death and destruction in the Congo region during the Free State period and the fact that Stanley had worked for [[Leopold II of Belgium|Leopold]] are considered by author [[Norman Sherry]] to have made him an inspiration for [[Joseph Conrad]]'s ''[[Heart of Darkness]].''<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pOvD_m5mLnwC&pg=PA119|page=340|title=Conrad's Western World | first=Norman | last=Sherry | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=1980 | isbn=0-521-29808-3}}</ref>

Conrad, however, had spent six months of 1890 as a steamship captain on the Congo, years after Stanley had been there (1879–1884) and five years after Stanley had been recalled to Europe and ceased to be Leopold's chief agent in Africa.<ref name="jeal2007"/>