Stanley, Slaughter and Slavery

This is a longer version of a piece I wrote for The Spectator on line

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/should-henry-morton-stanley-s-statue-be-pulled-down/

Stanley’s reputation was founded on his famous expedition to rescue Dr Livingstone and he was almost single-handedly responsible for creating the image of the old man as a living saint.  He held himself out as Livingstone’s apostle but he was cut from a different cloth, without deep reserves of patience, humility and humanity and his relationship with the toxic issues of violence and slavery was altogether more complicated.   He saw himself as Livingstone’s moral successor in Africa but there was an ocean between what he preached and how he behaved when out of the public glare.

Livingston
Livingstone from a popular book of  the1870's

 

Contrary to his high-toned writing, he was never driven by strong moral convictions and his opinions about the best way forward for Africa and its peoples were entirely mainstream, conditioned for the most part by the political considerations of his sponsors[1].  This is particularly true of his attitudes towards the toxic issues of race, violence and slavery and any modern account of his life has a duty to address them head on if his achievements are to be seen in context. 

All his biographers make the point that he did not subscribe to the worst racial prejudices to be found across Europe and America and it is true that in print he held fast to the notion that black men were equal in their humanity to white men, writing of himself “Being, I hope, free from prejudices of cast, colour, race, or nationality…[2].  He also made much of the special bond he enjoyed with the Zanzibaris who accompanied him on all his expeditions[3], but for him to hold that black people were not a separate species of humanity is hardly a proud indication of racial tolerance and a close reading of both his published and unpublished writings reveals that his relationship with black Africans was not remotely that of equals. 

He firmly believed in a strict hierarchy of races, placing white men right at the top of the tree, Arabs[4] above the Indian traders (Banyans, as he called them) and native Africans below everybody.  He professed to have the greatest contempt for half-castes and wrote that he “always” found them to be “cringing and hypocritical, cowardly, debased, treacherous and mean”.  One thing he was clear about throughout his life, was that the multitude of tribes further inland were inferior to all other races of men.  Right down at the bottom were the tribal clans he encountered in central Africa, for whom he had no time or patience, despising their low savagery “The aborigines are wild, utterly savage, and incorrigibly vindictive.  The dwarves – called Wambutti – are still worse, far worse…[5].  He did not consider they might have had very good reason to fear this stranger in their lands who was constantly at war with them, who murdered them and mutilated their bodies if they dared resist his progress.  He cared nothing that they were innocent people whose protection was at the very heart of European justification for being in central Africa in the first place.

His conduct on earlier expeditions had given rise to controversy and now as leader of the most significant peacetime expedition of the century with the world watching his every step, it might have been thought that he would have changed his behaviour - but he did not, preferring to make a better job of concealing the violence of his actions.   It is unsurprising that the young men who went with him took their cue from his words, were guided by his example and persuaded by his excuses.

Stairs.jpeg
Lt Stairs.  Image from IDA

Stairs, who was to become involved in another terrible atrocity after the expedition was over[6], understood his own shortcomings “At times one gets very much disgusted with the men.  They are brutes…Again and again and again have I tried to explain that work is work and that no feelings of brotherhood can exist unless work is done and done thoroughly.  No, it is no use, and every now and then I am horrified at myself and almost driven crazy as I in a frenzy cut a man’s head open with a stick.  Control myself I cannot as my work would remain undone.”[7]  

Stanley wanted people to believe that he held high to the ideals of non-violence and fair treatment to those under his command, but it is essential to look at the way he behaved rather than take his published writings as a reliable guide to his core beliefs.  To those who say it is unfair to judge 19th century Stanley by 21st century standards, I would point out that for most of his right-thinking contemporaries - including friends - his reputation was most definitely not as a man of peace. 

In each of his journeys into and across the heart of Africa, Stanley took dozens of porters, foot soldiers and armed guards.  The latter were necessary, because expeditions were not only taking such things as tents, boats, medical supplies, scientific equipment and personal items, but also quantities of cloth, brass wire and beads with which to pay for food as well as the toll or “hongo” extracted by every chief through whose territory any expedition needed to travel[8].  Trade goods were highly desirable – there was no point taking stuff that nobody wanted[9] - and along the route Arab trading caravans and local natives took every opportunity to steal and divert the goods away from the expeditions, which therefore had to be closely guarded. 

There was no alternative but for an expedition to be self-policing, but the temptation for an askari to fall behind the marching columns and vanish into the bush with his rifle was huge since he could set himself up for life on the proceeds and by deserting, he would also save himself from the privations and danger of the journey. As expeditions struggled through ever more dreadful conditions, the urge to run away must have become increasingly attractive and only two things were likely to have prevented it, either the fear of being utterly alone in the savage region of Africa surrounded by unfriendly natives and fierce animals, or the prospect of punishment. 

Whatever else it was, Stanley’s was never a State sponsored military expedition.  It was not governed by military law nor were any of the officers sanctioned to hand out military type punishments, but time and again the officers justified the use of corporal punishment by reference to military standards which had ceased to apply decades earlier[10].  While it may be right to say that these men lived in a more brutal age, brutality was certainly recognised as such except in Africa, where things were different and white men generally viewed natives as lazy and recalcitrant, taking for granted that physical discipline was essential and that flogging was really the only way to bring them to order[11]

On his very first expedition into Africa, Stanley had described the necessity of “inoculating” his expedition with a sense of discipline[12] but the question he left unanswered throughout his career was what he thought gave him the right to deal out summary execution, administer corporal punishment and legitimate brutal cruelty to instil obedience.  It never crossed his mind that a mere journalist is not an arm of any judicial system.  But whatever view one takes of the discipline meted out on his expeditions, the violence perpetrated on the Africans that had the misfortune to encounter him as he marched through their villages was always exceptional.   

By the middle of the 19th century the vacuum seal which had held the centre of Africa isolated for thousands of years had finally been broken, exposing it to new corrosions and the corrupting influences of men of different backgrounds from across Europe and America as they headed into the interior in order, so they were all quick to assert, to bring “civilisation” into the dark continent.  Each wave of intruders had their own ideas of what this meant, but this influx was deeply invasive and unwelcome to indigenous populations.  For many people, the journalist Stanley represented a new aspect of civilisation which was perceived to be altogether more suspect.  Missionaries, traders and geographers were being “…challenged with a new and formidable competition.  The splendid audacity of newspaper adventure has claimed the unexplored places of the earth for ‘Our Own Correspondent’; and the correspondent is not so much in these days a writer whose business is to give readers information about places and events as an expert who knows how to turn all geography and history into a vast advertising agency for the journal that employs him. From this newly invested missionary of civilization savage life cannot hope to escape; and the visitation is much more overwhelming than those which were previously to be dreaded.”[13]   

Stanley
Stanley around the 1870's

The article was a direct attack not just on Stanley but also on the British Daily Telegraph and American New York Herald newspapers that had sponsored his expeditions and it was written after the exposure of his first egregious crime.  He had been navigating Lake Victoria to establish whether Speke was right to believe that it was the source of Nile or whether there was any other major river flowing in or out of it and he had arrived at one of the many islands dotting the southern end of the lake in the hope of a peaceful reception, when the locals became threatening.  He beat a hasty retreat to the boats and once beyond arrow range returned fire, in the process killing and wounding a number of villagers.  Some weeks after that incident, he returned to the islands to extract retribution on them and again, out of range of arrows and from the safety of his boat, used his elephant gun to kill dozens of the “savages” who were lined up on the shore to prevent his landing.  As the Aborigines’ Protection and Anti-slavery Societies put it - “The gravamen of our charge against Mr Stanley was that, after having punished the natives for what he conceived to be an act of treachery on their part, by killing and wounding 14 of their number, he subsequently returned in cold blood to Bambireh and killed 42 more negroes, besides wounding over a hundred others.”[14]

Whatever the excuse might have been for the first attack, the second was generally acknowledged to be a cold-blooded massacre.  The Pall Mall Gazette had become one of Stanley’s most formidable critics and asked with irony and contempt - “Why should we expect Mr Stanley to be bound by the Geneva Convention, which it is proper enough to apply to such a contest as is now going on in Serbia, and any violation of which by the Turks would be denounced as an outrage upon Europe?  Mr Stanley finds that ‘explosive bullets’ hurt and terrify his enemies, and why should he abstain from using them?  The absurdity of binding him by any European arrangement is evident, if we reflect that according to the law of nations the armed progress of the Herald-Telegraph expedition in Africa is nothing more nor less than a piratical raid.  We must be content, however, to accept in the cause of science the ancient dogmas of the casuists that the end justifies the means. Mr Stanley’s elephant rifle, with its explosive bullets, may deal death among hundreds of savages, but some geographical discoveries will perhaps be made, and at any rate the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph will obtain an advertisement.”[15]  

Very pointed comparisons were being made with the British explorer Cameron who had recently crossed Africa from ocean to ocean without resorting to the sort of violence adopted by Welsh/American Stanley’s “…modern method of preaching civilisation to savage races through the medium of the elephant rifle and explosive bullets...[16],  Cameron gave the appearance of acting in a gentlemanly fashion, treating his carriers as equals and going out of his way to avoid confrontation[17].   When Stanley returned to England, he found his reputation deeply tarnished and although his supporters tried to argue that the natives had been aggressive savages long before he arrived and that he had merely been trying to defend himself from unprovoked attacks, he never fully recovered from the public reaction to this incident.  It was however the effect that the criticism had on his future behaviour that allows us to understand why it became important for him to conceal the significant failures of his last expedition. 

One perceptive journalist nailed Stanley’s character – “The truth is that, for a man of his iron nerves and freedom of speech about others, Stanley is almost phenomenally sensitive; he himself told a friend that he believed he was the thinnest-skinned man in creation.  Even friendly banter he is apt to take seriously.  When his motives or conduct in Africa are impugned it cuts him to the quick; if he has any suspicion that anything he has done will wear a doubtful complexion to the outside world he is apt in anticipation of attack to hit all round in self-defence.”[18]  

Stanley was deeply ashamed of his roots in North Wales, writing in the privacy of his notebooks that “Every recollection of my ignoble boyhood mortifies me sufficiently sometimes to such an extent that I fancy men read on my face that (it) troubles me, as it was my misfortune and my fault, surely if my thought so conflict me it would be foolish to put in the power of the malicious to cast it continually in my face[19] and the experience of finding himself under such a sustained attack scarred him badly.  Understandably, his instinct was to avoid giving people any more reason to despise him and it led him to create a parallel “truth” not just about his life but crucially, about his core beliefs.   He never forgot the lessons he learned, which were that it was essential never to disclose information which might be used against him and to keep a firm personal grasp on the narrative at all times.  By the time the EPRE was being put together, public memory had to some extent faded and the atrocity on Lake Victoria a decade earlier was seen as less significant than his geopolitical achievements.  Most people recognised his astonishing energy and drive and some had even come to regard him if not as an honourable Englishman, then at least an honorary one.

Unfortunately, his attitude towards native tribes standing in his way never softened, as he believed that the use of violence was an essential part of the safari experience, and his behaviour on the EPRE would make the incident on Lake Victoria look like a practice run[20].  His objection to paying fees to local communities through whose lands he travelled became a matter of principle and he would strong-arm his way through, thinking little of mutilating the corpses of dead natives, displaying them and the severed heads of those he had personally shot to act as a warning to the villages through which he had yet to pass.  Astonishingly, the justification he gave to his officers for this despoliation of his “enemies” was that if it made them pause before attacking him, he would not have to shoot so many, and it was therefore the most merciful course of action[21].  

Stanley’s critics in England only ever went so far as to accuse him of “piracy”, which may seem odd given that his killings were murder as most people understand the definition, until we realise that in England, there was a jurisdictional impediment to a murder charge - it was confined to unlawful killings “…under the Queen’s peace…” and therefore did not apply on foreign soil.   Whatever personal revulsion was felt, most people knew that in Africa, Stanley and his men were free to kill as many natives as they liked no matter how bogus the justification, happy in the knowledge that they would never be held to account.

Stanley fighting natives
Stanley involved in a typical fight with natives.
This fight, one of many between the Advanced
Column and  local tribesmen, took place just
a day's walk from Yambuya and resulted in the
deaths of over 30 natives. Stairs was also shot
and wounded by a arrow.
Image from IDA

Wholesale slaughter was not perhaps the worst of the excesses which accompanied his African adventures and no account of the EPRE is complete without considering Stanley’s relationship with the toxic issue of slavery.  By the 1860’s Europeans had long ceased to have any financial involvement in the slave trade and on the eastern side of Africa it was controlled and operated, as it had been for a thousand years, by Arab traders for whom it permeated their lives and became integrated into every aspect of their society. It was however the world demand for ivory which really turned it into a large-scale commercial activity because the only way to transport elephant tusks economically out of Africa was on the heads of local tribesmen captured for the purpose.  Huge numbers died on the journey but when the survivors reached in Zanzibar, they were sold, which was a win/win for the Arab traders.  

Stanley certainly recognised the dynamics and evils of the trade and wrote powerfully about it -  “There is only one remedy for these wholesale devastations of African aborigines, and that is the solemn combination of England, Germany, France, Portugal, South and East Africa, and Congo State against the introduction of gunpowder into any part of the Continent except for the use of their own agents, soldiers, and employees, or seizing upon every tusk of elephant ivory brought out, as there is not a single piece nowadays which has been gained lawfully. Every tusk, piece and scrap in the possession of an Arab trader has been steeped and dyed in blood. Every pound weight has cost the life of a man, woman or child, for every five pounds a hut has been burned, for every two tusks a whole village has been destroyed, every twenty tusks have been obtained at the price of a district with all its people, villages and plantations. It is simply incredible that, because ivory is required for ornaments or billiard games, the rich heart of Africa should be laid waste at this late year of the nineteenth century, signalized as it has been by so much advance, that populations, tribes and nations should be utterly destroyed. Whom after all does this bloody seizure of ivory enrich? Only a few dozens of half-castes, Arab and Negro, who, if due justice were dealt to them, should be made to sweat out the remainder of their piratical lives in the severest penal servitude…[22] 

It is quite marvellous that he could write all this without blushing at the recollection of either his dealings with Tippu Tib to pay for slave porters with both ivory and gunpowder or his own destruction of people, villages and plantations that stood in the path of his expedition, but it is even more astonishing that he has not been called out for this breath-taking hypocrisy by his modern day apologists who have had access to the evidence for the best part of a century.

Several years after his epic journey to rescue Emin Pasha had come to an end, an American newspaper carried a biographical sketch with his approval which fell hook line and sinker, for his self-righteousness “But perhaps the greatest undertaking committed to Mr Stanley was the relief of Emin Pasha, whose Equatorial Province was rapidly becoming disintegrated and himself a virtual prisoner. To relieve him, and to deal another blow to the slave trade, were the main objects in view, though valuable scientific discoveries were made.  The enormous cruelty of the slave dealers is cited by Mr Stanley in the book (which is one of many) on the Congo Free State.” 

When he died, his wife Dorothy memorialised him “He discovered Livingstone & revealed the sources of the Nile & the Congo & was the means through Providence of crushing slavery introducing civilisation into Central Africa & the first Christian Missionaries into Uganda[23] and he would certainly have wanted to be remembered as a passionate and effective scourge of the slave trade.

Stanley memorial
Stanley memorial in Pirbright church

 

The unpalatable truth however, is that he was not much interested in halting slavery and only wrote powerfully about its evils because he wanted to be perceived as a man of conscience rather than because he was one.  In practice, his attitude towards it was always pragmatic rather than principled and his actions were those of a man who never believed a word he wrote.  The finger pointing article in Harper’s Magazine was a promotional piece in favour of the building of an East African railway line for the benefit of his sponsor MacKinnon who was trying to persuade the Government to develop a British sphere of influence in Uganda, and he never once took a principled practical stance against slavery in all the time he spent in Africa.  Indeed, he was complicit in the worst aspects of it.

In the narrative accounts of his earlier expeditions, he had skirted around his transactions with slave traders and since no other witnesses survived to produce contrary accounts, he was able to camouflage the closeness of their association.  Stanley's personal papers have now been available for review for decades [24] as have those of the men that accompanied him and it not unfair to conclude that throughout the years he spent travelling in Africa, his practical contribution to the curse of slavery had been to travel with, negotiate with, befriend, support and encourage the men who controlled the slave trade.  In the process, he and his men became directly involved in the wholesale killing, kidnapping, ransoming, sale and maiming of those native Africans on whose behalf the whole of Europe claimed to be actively working to suppress such abuses.

kidnapped women.jpeg
This is Jameson's painting of women being ransomed for food at Yambuya -- a practice he refers to in his diary.  Stanley and the Advance Column also used this tacic to procure porters and food.  It caused outrage when the public found out about it - "I had an idea that any bartering in human beings by an Englishman was punishable by law; it seems in 'Darkest Africa'   Englishmen are a law unto themselves - unfortunately for the wretched natives." (Times letters12 November 1890)

  

Modern declarations of human rights recognise several ways in which slavery manifests itself[25] but in the 1880’s there were really only two aspects.  Slavery per se is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised and is known as “chattel” slavery, where the slave is treated as property of another person.  Within the broad definition of slavery also came forced labour, although strictly speaking it may not have involved one person exercising property ownership rights over another.  

During the course of their journey to relieve Emin, Stanley and every single one of his officers committed multiple breaches of long established laws outlawing slavery by accepting gifts of slaves[26], buying men, women and children to work in the camps or for personal use or as sex slaves[27], hiring slaves (through Mackinnon’s agent in Zanzibar) to act as porters[28], entering into the agreement with Tippu Tib[29] for the supply of porters at Stanley Falls to be paid for in ivory and gunpowder, raiding villages for cattle to ransom in exchange for unpaid labour[30] and directly capturing natives to act as slave porters.

Even though he was not himself capturing natives, he encouraged his officers and Zanzibaris to do the capturing amid scenes of utter brutality - “This morning Stanley told us to count over the slaves, chiefly women and children, whom our people had caught and hand half of them over to the Pasha to give to his people.  This Stairs and I did and handed him over 20.  We brought them over to the Pasha’s house, upon my word it was a most shameful scene and was every bit as bad as the open slave markets which existed in the East till virtuous England set her back up.  Orders are however orders and we must obey them in spite of the heartrending scenes and shameless brutality we see in these raids.”[31]  Jephson knew exactly how this would be perceived in England “It is one of those high handed acts which African travellers are obliged to resort to and for which the Exeter Hall beauties call them pirates and filibusters[32] but he was swayed by Stanley’s argument that their collective behaviour was well intentioned and that it was the Islamists that were really behaving badly. 

Stanley was acutely aware that truth about the EPRE could not be allowed to make its way into the public domain.  When he boldly asserted that its purpose was humanitarian, few people bothered to question him and the interested public, apart from a handful of honourable exceptions, became complicit in the mythology of his life and achievements.  He wanted the world to believe that he was motivated by altruism and high moral principles but when the lid is lifted on his self-proclaimed virtues, it reveals a ruthless, violent man with a vicious, unforgiving streak and a calculated indifference to the consequences of his actions. 

Too much of what he asserted in his books, in his lectures and public pronouncements lacks objectivity and fails to pass the evidential test of logical coherence and consistency for him to be treated as a source of reliable historical fact, but that was never his purpose.   It was not some objective truth he was after, so much as a version of events in which he was always the hero of the narrative and never the villain.  As we re-evaluate the past, we must confront the fact that the EPRE was neither “magnificent” nor a “success”; it was never close to being a humanitarian mission and was only promoted as one after the event because Stanley needed his readership and particularly his chief sponsor MacKinnon, to have the reassurance of believing that it had some high moral purpose. 

How he managed to achieve this is one of history’s most breath-taking examples of media manipulation and spin, but then he was a far more effective journalist than he was an explorer.

Text © Marcus Rutherford 2024.  Images from IDA and "The Pictorial Edition of the Life and Discoveries of David Livingstone". Photograph of Jameson's dairies by Marcus Rutherford courtesy the Pitt Rivers Museum


[1] His political career was unremarkable for a man whose experiences should have given him a unique insight into colonial advancement in Africa; his few speeches were mind-numbingly tedious, and he always voted along party lines on every issue. [Hansard]

[2] Stanley - “Through the Dark Continent” [TDC] p48.  The true test to determine Stanley’s racial tolerance - then as now - is not whether he liked or disliked black people, but whether he would have allowed them the same basic human rights as a white man and the answer is an unequivocal “No”.  A different question is whether his  racial prejudice can be excused as being no worse than Victorian sentiment of the time.

[3] His companions would not have agreed - “I hear people like Stanley saying they are splendid fellows, heroes, models of virtue, faithfulness, courage etc, yet no man ever born up to now hates Zanzibaris from his inner heart as much as HM Stanley; one judges by his constant venomous imprecations and his sorry … treatment of them” ("African Exploits - the Diaries of William Stairs") [Stairs] 5 Aug 1888 - p198

[4] Every single one of the Arabs with whom he had dealings bought, owned and sold slaves.  Many were slaves themselves.

[5] Letter Stanley to AL Bruce 4 September 1888 published in the press in June 1889

[6] The Katanga expedition of 1891-92.  Uniquely in history, Stairs held commissions in the armies of both sides of that conflict. 

[7] Stairs 24 December 1887 - p150

[8] Some local tribes had established a tolling system before allowing strangers to cross their lands and although this “hongo” smoothed the way for the early explorers, Stanley viewed the practice as extortion and safe in the knowledge that his firepower was superior, preferred to barge his way through the country and ignore the insolence of the natives barring his path.

[9] Although Stanley managed to do that too, by taking brass rods to central Africa when he surely knew they were not used as currency in the region.

[10] As far back as 1836 the highest number of strokes permitted by General Courts Marshal for a flogging was limited to 200 (it was less for Regimental and other Courts Marshal) which was still capable of rendering a man insensible and bring him very close to death. 300 strokes were to all intents and purposes, a death sentence.

[11] The universal view was that an African was capable of withstanding far greater punishment than a European, which is why the flogging punishments were so severe.

[12] Stanley – TDC - p71

[13] Pall Mall Gazette 15 Aug 1876

[14] The Times 1 November 1876

[15] Pall Mall Gazette 15 August 1876

[16] Pall Mall Gazette 9 September 1876

[17] Up to a point– there was no equality while the man in command was white and the subordinate porters black.

[18] New Review of May 1890

[19] Stanley Archive, Royal Museum of Africa, Belgium [SA83]

[20] The argument that he was merely defending himself from lethal attacks of natives does not withstand any level of critical analysis.  Quite apart from the obvious point that he was a trespasser in their lands and that it was the local tribes that were in fact legitimately defending themselves and their villages from his own murderous progress, his use of lethal violence was wholly excessive, a deliberate strategy of shock and awe designed to cow the natives into submission so that he did not have to waste time coming to terms in every territory through which he had to pass.

[21] "The Diary of AJ Mounteney Jephson" [AMJ] [p215].  Jephson wrote that Stanley would always try to negotiate his way through the country and only used force as a last resort, but this is not supported by the evidence. He simply did not have the patience to engage in the lengthy social niceties with primitive tribesmen and unless they were quick to allow him through, he did not hesitate to give an early demonstration of his superior fire power.

[22] "In Darkest Africa, Vol 1" [IDA1] p229

[23] Memorial in Pirbright church

[24] For example, on 7 Sept 1871 he “…bought 3 boys from a slave gang seen perambulating about Kwihara. They are called Kalulu Bill Ali and Majwara – I paid 60 dollars gold.” On Sept 10 Stanley was still “…endeavouring to purchase a boy slave to carry one of my guns, but the prices demanded for one 12 years old was, as I consider it, enormous, so I did not buy one”  and again - “Bought a little boy slave about 10 years old named Dugum Ali for $20 in gold from an Arab to carry one of my hunting guns…The expedition now numbers  2 white men, 1 Arab boy, 1 Hindi, 29 natives, 1 slave boy total 36 souls, exclusive of 2 slave women...”  [“Finding Dr Livingstone” by Leduc-Grimaldi and Newman [2020] and [SA 73]. Away from the privacy of his diary, Stanley misled the world into believing the children were a gift or that he had purchased their freedom (or both).  The argument that Stanley was “buying the childrens' freedom” is wrong – he bought them expressly to work for him.

[25] Including trafficking women for sex, bonded labour and recruiting child as soldiers.

[26] See for example Dr Parke Archive  [Parke] - 30 Aug and 16 Sept 1888

[27] See for example Bonny Arc 8.12.1887, 1.3.1887, 15.5.1887 and 24.5.188 1888 – [SA 69 and 70]

[28] See for example Stanley [IDA p93]

[29] Stanley’s arrangement with Tippu Tib.  I set out the agreement in the Section "Stanley's Brushes with the Law"

[30] AMJ – [p340]

[31] AMJ – 20 April 1889 [p344] The orders were Stanley’s.

[32] Same passage.  The reference to the “Exeter Hall beauties” is revealing.  The venue in the Strand became a shorthand for the Anti-Slavery lobby (to which Stanley professed to belong) which met there.  Those social reformers Jephson was deriding for their wet liberalism were the very people whose moral crusade - of which he was so proud - led to England’s “virtuous” dismantling of slave markets around the Indian Ocean.   There is no difference between the way Stanley behaved towards slaves and the way in which Arabs had carried out their dreadful trade for centuries.