In the second half of the nineteenth century, the exploration of Africa was marked by the hectic search for the sources of the Nile. The travellers’ heroic endeavours to penetrate into the interior of the dark continent were hindered, however, by huge geographical obstacles, the harsh climate and sometimes the natives’ fierce opposition. Sub-Saharan Africa was then a vast area Europeans knew very little about: white explorers had seldom ventured inland, deterred by rumours of cannibalism, tropical diseases, wild beasts, thick forests and treacherous swamps. But at the same time, the entangled vegetation of this ‘terra incognita’ was perceived as a primeval, virgin territory to be penetrated and conquered, notably through white male courage and physical prowess. Henry Morton Stanley was probably the British archetypal hero of this colonial myth of masculinity.

Born in North Wales, Stanley expatriated to North America as a young man. He eventually became a world-famous journalist, when the New York Herald commissioned him to Africa to determine whether David Livingstone, the legendary Scottish missionary explorer who had been reported missing for six years, could be located. Stanley reached Zanzibar in January 1871 and proceeded to Lake Tanganyika, Livingstone's last known location, where he did find the sick explorer, a feat which greatly heightened European interest in the continent. In 1874, Stanley set off on another expedition that took him across Africa from east to west, and this second 999-day epic definitely secured him a place in the popular mythology of exploration. Between 1879 and 1885, he worked in the Congo for King Leopold II, conducting expeditions and signing treaties for the Belgians; between 1887 and 1889, he commanded the ‘Emin Pasha Relief Expedition’, the last major European expedition into the interior of Africa, sent to the relief of the besieged governor of Equatoria, threatened by Mahdist forces. What went into the records this time was the funds put at the explorer's disposal, far larger than any amount previously allocated to an African expedition, and the popular enthusiasm Stanley was able to arouse as a consequence was so great that at the end of the century his portrait was reproduced in countless advertisements, selling everything from soap to Bovril.