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Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) was the greatest of all European explorers of Africa. At the height of his career, from 1870 to 1890, he spent more than thirteen years in the ‘Dark Continent’. Edited and introduced by Frank McLynn.

Sir Henry Morton Stanley GCB (born John Rowlands; 28 January 1841 – 10 May 1904) was a Welsh-American explorer, journalist, soldier, colonial administrator, author and politician who was famous for his exploration of Central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone, whom he later claimed to have greeted with the now-famous line: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”. Besides his discovery of Livingstone, he is mainly known for his search for the sources of the Nile and Congo rivers, the work he undertook as an agent of King Leopold II of the Belgians which enabled the occupation of the Congo Basin region, and his command of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He was knighted in 1897, and served in Parliament as a Liberal Unionist member for Lambeth North from 1895 to 1900.

More than a century after his death, Stanley’s legacy remains the subject of enduring controversy. Although he personally had high regard for many of the native African people who accompanied him on his expeditions,  the exaggerated accounts of corporal punishment and brutality in his books fostered a public reputation as a hard-driving, cruel leader, in contrast to the supposedly more humanitarian Livingstone. His contemporary image in Britain also suffered from the inaccurate perception that he was American. In the 20th century, his reputation was also seriously damaged by his role in establishing the Congo Free State for King Leopold II. Nevertheless, he is recognized for his important contributions to Western knowledge of the geography of Central Africa and for his resolute opposition to the slave trade in East Africa.