Henry Morton Stanley, born John Rowland on January 29, 1841 at Denbigh,Wales was one of the most famous nineteenth -century British explorers. At the age of 18 he decided to leave Wales. As a cabin boy he sailed to New Orleans, Louisiana, which he reached in 1858. There he gained employment under an American merchant named Henry Stanley, whose name he adopted.

Henry Stanley was one of the young men serving in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.

In 1867 Stanley worked as a correspondent for The New York Herald, whose manager James Gordon Bennett commissioned him to Africa in order to cover the "inauguration" of the Suez Canal and to find the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone who, since having left Scotland to find the source of the Nile had not been heard of.

On January 6, 1871 Henry Morton Stanley reached the island of Zanzibar where he visited Sultan Barghash. On March 21 Stanley set off from Zanzibar with 2;000 men accompanying him, in order to find Livingstone. After having found him at Ujiji on November 1872, and having greeted with the famous remark, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley started to explore the rivers and lakes of central Africa. In "Trough The Dark Continent" (1877) Stanley comments on the discoveries he has made during those explorations.

Stanley returned to Zanzibar on May 7, 1872 and headed towards London where he became a famous person. Because of having lost his interest in journalism he went back to Africa in order to continue with his explorations.

The New York Herald, Stanley’s former employer and The London Daily Telegraph shared the cost of Stanley’s next expedition, in which Stanley was supposed to continue the work of Livingstone, who had died in 1873.

In September 1874 Stanley reached the interior of Zanzibar again and left for the mainland a few months later, accompanied by 359 persons.

In this expedition Stanley visited the King Mutesa of Buganda, rounded Lake Victoria and followed the Congo River to the Atlantic Ocean. About half of his party had died during that expedition.

In January 1887 Stanley returned to London.

From1879 to 1884 Stanley went on a further expedition to the Congo and stayed there for 5 years. During this expedition Stanley established and governed the Congo Free State. This expedition led to Stanley’s book, The Founding of the Congo Free State. He returned to London as a very famous man. Stanley married in 1890, elected to Parliament as a liberal Unionist member for North Lambeth in1895. Stanley died in May, 1904.