Editing William Grant Stairs (section)

==The Stairs Expedition to Katanga==
{{Main|Stairs Expedition}}
In 1891 on Stanley's recommendation, Stairs was appointed by King [[Leopold II of Belgium]] to command a mission to take [[Katanga Province|Katanga]] also known as Garanganze with or without the consent of its powerful king, [[Msiri]].<ref>'African Exploits: The Diaries of William Stairs, 1887-1' by McGill Queens Univ Press 1997. This collection of William Stair's diaries, includes his official account of Sir Henry M. Stanley's trans-African expedition to rescue Emin Pasha in the Sudan. The diaries convey the nature and course of imperialist expeditions in 19th-century Africa and the psychological and moral corruption caused by absolute power.</ref> Leopold had used Stanley's services before and agreed with his use of force and understood Stairs to be in the same mould, and he had a reputation for carrying out orders completely and without hesitation.<ref>Moloney (1893), p14.</ref>

The Stairs Expedition was a military mission of 400 men under the [[Congo Free State]] flag, armed with 200 modern rifles.<ref name=RPJ/> (Msiri's men had muzzle-loading muskets). Stairs ran a well-organised expedition and won the loyalty of his officers and chiefs ([[Zanzibar]]i supervisors). It was smaller and lighter than his previous expedition, with only two other military officers. They were in a race against [[Cecil Rhodes]]' [[British South Africa Company]] expanding from the south, which had already sent two failed expeditions to Msiri. Stairs and [[Joseph Moloney]], the expedition's British medical officer, were aware that they could potentially come into armed conflict with a British expedition, and agreed they would nevertheless discharge their duties to their employer, Leopold.<ref>Joseph Moloney (1893), p. 11; p225; p14.</ref>

The Stairs Expedition became notorious for the fate of Msiri. After three days of negotiations without progress, Stairs gave Msiri an ultimatum to sign the treaty the next day, 20 December 1891. When Msiri did not appear, he sent his second-in-command, [[Omer Bodson|Captain Bodson]] to arrest Msiri, who stood his ground. Bodson shot him dead, and a fight broke out.<ref name=RPJ/> The expedition took their wounded and Msiri's body back to their camp where Stairs was waiting, and there they cut off Msiri's head and hoisted it on a pole in plain view as a 'barbaric lesson' to his people.<ref name=RPJ>René de Pont-Jest: ''L'Expédition du Katanga, d'après les notes de voyage du marquis Christian de Bonchamps'', in: Edouard Charton (editor): ''Le Tour du Monde'' magazine, also published bound in two volumes by Hachette, Paris (1893). Available online at [http://collin.francois.free.fr/Le_tour_du_monde/ www.collin.francois.free.fr/Le_tour_du_monde/] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100205012517/http://collin.francois.free.fr/Le_tour_du_monde/ |date=5 February 2010 }}</ref> Some of the Garanganze were massacred by the expedition's [[askari]]s, and most of the rest fled into the bush.<ref>David Gordon: "Owners of the Land and Lunda Lords: Colonial Chiefs in the Borderlands of Northern Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo." ''The International Journal of African Historical Studies'', Vol. 34, No. 2 (2001), pp. 315–338.</ref>

Stairs handed over Msiri's body to his two brothers and an adopted son, Makanda Bantu, whom Stairs installed as chief to replace Msiri, and who signed the treaty acknowledging Leopold as sovereign. The two brothers refused to do so until Stairs sent Moloney to threaten them with the same fate as Msiri.<ref>Moloney (1893), pp197, 201.</ref>

Oral histories of the Garanganze people say that the expedition kept Msiri's head – by some accounts in a can of [[kerosene]] – but it cursed and killed everyone who carried it and eventually, this included Stairs.<ref>[http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/lpca/aps/tshibumba1a.html "The history of Zaire as told and painted by Tshibumba Kanda Matulu in conversation with Johannes Fabian."] ''Archives of Popular Swahili'', Volume 2, Issue 2 (11 November 1998) {{ISSN|1570-0178}}.</ref><ref name="Gordon">David Gordon: "Decentralized Despots or Contingent Chiefs: Comparing Colonial Chiefs in Northern Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo." KwaZulu-Natal History and African Studies Seminar, University of Natal, Durban, 2000.</ref> He was ill with [[malaria]] throughout January 1892. After being relieved by another expedition, the Stairs Expedition set out on the long return journey to Zanzibar. Stairs was frequently sick but by May 1892 had recovered. On a steamer down the lower Zambezi he had another attack of malaria which killed him on 9 June 1892. He is buried in the European Cemetery in [[Chinde]], Mozambique at the mouth of the [[Zambezi River]].<ref>Moloney (1893), p276.</ref>

Only 189 of the 400 men on the expedition made it back to Zanzibar, a year after they had left, most of the rest died and few deserted.<ref name=RPJ/> Katanga became part of the Congo Free State, which was annexed by Belgium in 1908 after an international outcry over the killings, brutality and slavery by Leopold's regime. In the early 20th century as Katanga's mining industries developed, some British in [[Northern Rhodesia]], representing the losers in the scramble for Katanga, thought of Stairs as a mercenary and traitor to the [[British Empire]].<ref>[http://www.nrzam.org.uk/NRJ/V2N6/V2N6.htm Mr Justice J B Thomson: "Memories of Abandoned Bomas No. 8: Chiengi". ''Northern Rhodesia Journal'' online] at NRZAM.org. Vol II, No. 6, pp67−77 (1954). See p67: "…Stairs, the renegade Englishman... ."</ref>