1885 The Congo and the Founding of its Free State: a Story of Work and Exploration

Description

First Edition, Folding Maps, Illustrated, Publishers' Original Binding

The first edition of this work.

Complete in two volumes.

Volume I illustrated with a frontispiece, one folding colour map to the pocket to the rear, three folding colour maps, twenty-three plates, and in-text engravings. Collated, complete.

Volume II illustrated with a half-tone frontispiece, one folding colour map to the pocket to the rear, nineteen plates, and in-text engravings. One of the plates in Volume II is an in-text plan, however it is listed as a plate. Collated, complete.

Thirty-two pages of publisher's adverts to the rear of Volume II.

Bookplate of Sir T. F. Buxton to the front pastedowns, and to the verso of the front endpaper of Volume I, with Buxton's signature to the verso to the front endpaper, dated 1885. Sir Thomas Foxwell Buxton was named after his grandfather, who was an abolitionist and a social reformer. He was also the grandson of his namesake, the first Baronet, who founded the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and for the Civilization of Africa in 1839. Through this expedition, Buxton promoted the 1841 Niger expedition.

This expedition work recounts the author's work undertaken as an agent of King Leopold II of Belgium. Stanley's work enabled the occupation of the Congo Basin region, and it's Free State, when it was privately owned by Leopold.

Stanley uses this work to justify the claiming in Congo during Europe's 'scramble for Africa'.

Written by Henry Morton Stanley, a journalist and explorer, who went on an expedition to search for David Livingstone. Stanley considered this Congo expedition to be the most important thing he ever achieved.