The Last Expedition: Stanley's Mad Journey Through the Congo

"Advertised as a mission of mercy, Stanley's secret agenda was territorial expansion on the model of Leopold's Congo or the British East India Company, and what is revealed so vividly in the diaries of those who accompanied him is the dark underside of both the man and the colonial impulse. The expedition took whatever it wanted from the Africans, and when the Africans were killed defending their possessions, they didn't even rate an entry in Stanley's journal." "Although he expected it to be the crowning achievement in a career that had already made him "the greatest explorer in African history," Stanley's last expedition disintegrated into a nightmare of disease and starvation, desertion and rebellion, and brutality and savagery that brought to an end an era of European exploration in Africa that had lasted almost one hundred years."--BOOK JACKET.