Figures like Henry Stanley become ever more controversial over time. People think more about the cruelty and endless involvement in places like the Congo and less about the adventure and knowledge advancement that such expeditions brought. I think it is safe to assume that Stanley has been on his last British stamp. So travel with me back to 1973 to look at Henry Stanley the man. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp issue totaled nine stamps each with a different explorer and the part of the world they explored. Sir Francis Drake comes out the best in this style of stamp. As a ship born explorer, his map is the whole world.
Todays stamp is issue A236, a 3 Penny stamp issued by Great Britain on April 8th, 1973. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it is used or unused.
Henry Stanley was born under the name John Rowlands. His parents were not married and he was raised until age 5 by his maternal grandfather. When he died John ended up at the St. Asaph Union Workhouse, where he was abused including sexually. At age 18 John immigrated to the USA landing in New Orleans. In later life Stanley told the story of being hired and then adopted by well off British grocer Henry Stanley, whose name he took. There is some historical debate if this was just a story made up by Stanley when his identity didn’t check out. His biography then tells how he fought in the American Civil War first for the Confederates, later for the Union and finally with the Union Navy. His recordkeeping shipboard lead to his post war career as a freelance journalist.
It was as a journalist that Stanley first got to Africa, traveling with a British expedition trying to save a British envoy being held prisoner by the Ethiopian Emperor Tewodrus II. His stories were popular and he was commissioned by a New York newspaper to be an African correspondent based out of Zanzibar. It was there that he met Tippu Tip, an Arab slave and ivory trader from Muscat that helped him gain much knowledge of central Africa. This allowed Stanley to go on the expedition that found David Livingston, who hadn’t been heard from in five years after setting off to find the source of the Nile River. This lead to several more expeditions that found the source of both the Nile and Congo rivers and recovered a lost Ottoman Pasha in South Sudan.
This al lead to lecture series and book deals in the USA and The UK. From the expeditions Stanley brought back a black boy he named Kalulu after the Swahili word for antelope. He wrote a surprisingly for the time homosexual book about Kalulu whose age he adjusted up and Selim, an interpreter Stanley employed, whose age he adjusted down. Kalulu died at age 12 when his canoe went over a waterfall. He worked to get one of the falls at Victoria renamed for Kalulu, his one naming that actually stuck.
Later Stanley was commissioned by King Leopold to get a colony going in the Congo. This made him a rival of his old friend Tippu Tip who was doing the same on behalf of Zanzibar. I seemed a race between whites and Arabs over who would dominate central Africa. The whites of course “won” that even if they were less cruel with less slave raiding. Not totally without cruelty. Stanley had to discipline a member of one of his expeditions members who was the heir to the Jameson Whiskey fortune. He had bought an 11 year old girl at the slave market and then gave her over to cannibals. He wanted to make a book of recording how the cannibals would cook and eat her. He died before he could publish his findings.
Stanley returned to England after his last expedition, married and adopted another this time white boy. Stanley was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1898. He died in 1904. His gravestone had his Stanley name and Bula Metari. his name in Africa from the Swahili for breaker of rocks.
Well my drink is empty and I am afraid today I will put the bottle away. My scale on Henry Stanley moves around too much to toast. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.