Travelers and Explorers, Part 7: Sir Henry Stanley (1841-1904) – “Dr. Livingstone, I Presume?”

Henry Stanley was a soldier-turned-journalist-turned explorer who charged wide swaths of the Congo. He famously searched for the source of the Nile, commanded the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (a major expedition into the interior of Africa), and, most famously, searched and found missionary and fellow explorer David Livingstone.” He was knighted in 1899

He led major expeditions there and wrote much of the early scientific literature of Sub-Saharan Africa and contributed to nearly every field of inquiry in the subject area. His accounts remained the standard work in botany, biology, zoology, geography, and anthropology of the regions treated for decades. One English writer related of his discoveries, “The fact is now generally recognized that Stanley, after Livingstone, gave greater impulse than any other man to the movement which resulted in the rapid exploration of most parts of unknown Africa.” But Stanley’s legacy has its black marks, though. He was a product of nineteenth-century colonialism and the European Scramble for Africa, and as such was used by monarchs to extend their landholdings on the continent.