This is a review of Tom Jeal’s Stanley: the Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer. Although perhaps the most carefully researched of the many books of Stanley, the book suffers from its zealous attempt to absolve Stanley of his inhumanity in spite of the most extensive historical evidence of the abominations that he committed against Africans. Instead, Jeal sets out to humanize a historical monster who paved the way for many pogroms committed by the colonial hegemons in Africa. Even deep flaws of character, including self-denial, that were so evident in Stanley are either explained away or excused. The book is a truly incredible attempt to valorize a person many Africans would rather forget

Mutua, Makau wa

English

Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law

University at Buffalo School of Law Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law Book Reviews Faculty Scholarship 2009 An Apology for a Pathological Brute (reviewing Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer (2007)) Makau Mutua University at Buffalo School of Law, mutua@buffalo.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/book_reviews  Part of the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation Makau Mutua, An Apology for a Pathological Brute (reviewing Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer (2007)), 31 Hum. Rts. Q. 806 (2009). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/book_reviews/43 Copyright © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article was first published in Human Rights Quarterly 31.3 (2009), 806–809. Reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press. This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Book Reviews by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. For more information, please contact lawscholar@buffalo.edu. HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLYlonger correct" are not entirely beyondcontestation .24Gallant's survey of legal texts to sup-port his conclusion that customary inter-national law requires individual culpabil-ity, and prohibits collective punishments,also belies his normative commitmentsto individuals, not systems, as the baseunits of analysis in both the commissionof atrocity and in the possibilities of tran-scending atrocity.2 However, it shouldnot be taken as axiomatic that individualculpability is the most accurate reflec-tion of the multi-causal origins of massatrocity. If in the process of prohibitingcollective punishments based on "guiltby association,"2 6 international law alsocomes to prohibit other more fine-grainedmodalities of collective responsibility,then the international community maylose an important accountability tool.Gallant is explicitly careful not to havehis work sustain this more radical thesis.27He merely notes that "each criminallyliable natural person [must] have someindividual criminal responsibility." 8 Healso recognizes that non-retroactivityfirmly applies only to the criminal lawcontext, as opposed to the non-criminallaw context,29 which might well apply asanother modality of transitional justice.However, if customary internationallaw were to move in the direction ofpurposively condemning collective re-sponsibility instead of just the crudestforms of collective punishment, then theaccountability paradigm may becomeneedlessly narrow.In conclusion, The Principle ofLegality in International and Compara-tive Criminal Law is indispensible forthe student, teacher, or practitioner ofinternational and criminal law, as wellas human rights law. The book is alsoof great interest to those concernedwith transitional justice. Gallant's workis an unmitigated success. He skillfullypresents the material in great detail, andthereby satisfies a crucial reference pur-pose, while also ensuring that the readerappreciates the big picture. The fact thatThe Principle of Legality in Internationaland Comparative Criminal Law inspiresvivid theoretical discussion demonstratesGallant's drafting skill in establishing theexistence of legality as a rule along withits normative merits.Mark A. Drumbl*Washington and Lee School of Law* Mark A. Drumbl is Class of 1975 AlumniProfessor of Law and Director, TransnationalLaw Institute, Washington and Lee UniversitySchool of Law.Tim Jeal, Stanley: The ImpossibleLife of Africa's Greatest Explorer(Faber 2007), 570 pages, ISBN9780571221028.An Apology for a Pathological BruteI am surprised that I managed to completemy reading of Stanley: The Impossible Lifeof Africa's Greatest Explorer, the detailedand painstakingly argued biography byTim Jeal, without decomposing fromrevulsion. No one who knows anythingabout African colonial history can fail toGALLANT, supra note 1, at 9.Id. at 17.Id.Id. at 44.Id. at 18.Id. at 392.Vol. 31Book Reviewsbe provoked by one of the most relentlessand carefully researched works on Mor-ton Henry Stanley, the nineteenth centuryjournalist-adventurer whose early claimto fame was locating David Livingstone,perhaps the most famous European ad-venturer, in the belly of Africa. But if thereis any consolation in my labor, it is thatthe book says more about the West andTim Jeal than it does of Africa. In a workthat will be despised by many Africans,but almost certainly lauded in the West,Jeal bares open that which is wrong withthe Western perception of Africa.For a work from a writer whoclaims some objectivity, the book is aconcerted-even emotional defense-ofthe chilling life of a man many Africanswould rather forget. Stanley is manythings, but certainly not an objectivereportage of one of the most contro-versial colonialist-adventurists just asmuch of Africa was coming under theboot of the West. From the outset, Jealembarks on a journey of redemption andsalvation in which the writer seeks torecast history through the interpretationof a life lived in blood, racial hatred,and ignominy. Typical of Jeal, the mostimportant achievements by Stanley arethe conquest of Africa's cartography. Itis all about the white European conquestof Africa. Africans are themselves onlyaccoutrements in this large Europeannarrative of history.A typical example of this obsessionwith the feats of the so-called discoverersof Africa is the uninterrogated assertionthat Stanley was the "first man in historyto have followed that great river [theCongo River] 1,800 miles from the heartof the continent." One finds it inconceiv-able that Africans themselves had neverattempted and accomplished such a feat.But perhaps to Jeal and his fellow West-erners, Africans do not count as "men."To Jeal, before Stanley and Livingstone,"apart from the apparently inaccessiblecentral and sub-Saharan Africa, the onlysignificant parts of the planet left unex-plored were the equally daunting polarregions, along with northern Greenlandand the north-east and north-west pas-sages." The allusion is clear: only beasts-or sub-humans-can live in such remoteand inhospitable regions.Even in his narration of Stanley's earlylife, Jeal makes implausible apologies fora sad and unforgiving childhood. Fromhis "illegitimate," dysfunctional, abusive,and abandoned childhood, it shouldbe clear that Stanley suffered life-longtraumas that shaped and deformed hisidentity for the rest of his life. Several ofthese include his proclivity for brutalityand sadism, his penchant for outrightlies and impossible exaggerations abouthis identity and paternity and achieve-ments. Not to mention his obvious racialself-hatred and desire to be classified aseither English and later as an Americanrather than the Welshman that he was.But rather than use the inhumanity of Brit-ish society to explain why Stanley laterbecame a pathological brute-includinghis racial animus toward American blacksduring the Civil War-Jeal instead ex-cuses and minimizes these distortionsof character.Jeal struggles mightily to explain awayor diminish Stanley's every perceivedcharacter flaw or failure. One curiousinstance is Jeal's attempt to swat awayarguments that Stanley may have beengay or at least bisexual. He perceiveshomosexuality as a problem that mustbe explained away or discounted. Else-where, Jeal states, rather incredulously,that Stanley was not a racist. This in spiteof the fact that Stanley had murdered incold blood or flogged mercilessly manyAfricans who were in servitude to himon his expeditions. What Jeal misses overand over again is the permission that2009HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLYEuropeans like Stanley gave themselvesas the arbiters over the life and death ofmany an African.Particularly troubling in Stanley isJeal's failure to situate Stanley, Living-stone, and other early European explorersas the pathways to the colonization andexploitation of Africa by Europe. In Stan-ley's case, apart from his connivance withArab and European enslavers of Africans,it is impossible to separate him from thebrutal fate of the Congo. It was his workthat led King Leopold II of Belgium tothe Congo and the utter devastation ofthe region and its people. It was Stanleywho set the example, stage, and tonefor the brutalities and pogroms of theBelgians in the Congo. Any attempt atscholarship that sidesteps or apologizesfor this inescapable connection betweenStanley and colonialism is an inexcusablenod at crimes against humanity.Jeal makes passing references to whathe calls the predicament of Stanley andother early colonialists in Africa. He failsto situate the Stanley expeditions in theirright historical context. Here were hordesof uninvited and invading Europeans onthe African continent. If anything, Jealproceeds as though the Europeans have amore superior moral claim to Africa thanAfricans themselves. That is why he tellsthe story of Stanley from the colonialist'sviewpoint, and treats Africans as fodderin the larger European mission of civili-zation of the native. The implication ofJeal's historical narrative is unmistakable:even if these brutalities did take place,they were necessary for the explorationand civilization of the natives by themaster race.There is surprisingly little reflectionin Jeal's Stanley about the fate of Africaand the role that the early European ad-venturists played in its construction. Atthe very least, this is either an attemptat amnesia or simply bad scholarshipon the part of a supposedly respectedauthor. Since Stanley represents the pointof cultural contact-and civilizationalclash-between Africa and the West,it behooves the author to deliberate onthe meaning of that encounter and itshistorical meaning. Rather than lamentthat some writers now unfairly demonizeStanley-whom Jeal would have us be-lieve was a saintly explorer-the authorshould have set aside any biased personalagendas and let history speak for itself.Instead, Jeal writes a political book indefense of a historical monster.I do not deny that there is a placein scholarship for the reinterpretationof history, particularly of notable figuresand their roles. But authors have to becareful that they are not so possessedwith the desire to defend their iconsthat they lose sight of the moral purposeof scholarship. The evidence of history,including in Stanley's own words, is sooverwhelming that a complete rewriteof the narrative-which is what Jealattempts-is not convincing. Nothing isserved-except the agenda of Europeanexceptionalism-when a writer of reputeresorts to such an untenable project.Nor can racists, particularly of the harshimperial hue of the brutal nineteenthcentury, be easily humanized. If Jeal'sattempt was the resurrection of a hu-mane Stanley, then I must judge him acomplete failure.The arc of history has not been kind toAfrica over the last several hundred years.In that span of time, the continent hasundergone three disfiguring traumas. Thefirst was the trauma of slavery. The secondwas the trauma of colonialism. The lastwas the trauma of post-colonialism inwhich African-ruled states have struggledto give economic and social meaningto the citizenship of their populations.Stanley was a participant in the firsttrauma and an early conceptualizer of theVol. 31Book Reviewssecond. The first two traumas are largelyresponsible for the third. Any completehistorical interpretation of the life ofStanley cannot simply overlook thesebasic historical facts, or worse, seek toexplain them away.In Stanley, Jeal has written a detailedbut controversial account of the life ofone of the most celebrated "discoverers"of Africa. In the book, and in commonlore in the West, Stanley continues tomesmerize those who read about him.The romantic seduction for the West isthat of the first white man to "explore" the"darkness" of Africa and report in detailabout his exploits. Lost in translation arethe "inconvenient truths" that make theadventure-murders of Africans, unmen-tionable brutalities, the capture and useof Africans as slaves for expeditions, thescout of imperial powers, the coercionand fraud to deprive Africans of theirsovereignty and lands, and precursorof the colonial state. In any other book,these inconvenient truths would be thereal story. But in Jeal's Stanley, they arethe excusable realities of the time. It isan apologia for a pathological brute. Somuch for history through the eyes of astar-crossed writer.Makau Mutua*State University of New Yorkat Buffalo* Makau Mutua is Dean, SUNY DistinguishedProfessor and the Floyd H. & Hilda L. HurstFaculty Scholar at Buffalo Law School, TheState University of New York. He is the Direc-tor of the Human Rights Center and teachesinternational human rights, international busi-ness transactions, and international law. Hewas educated at the University of Nairobi, theUniversity of Dar-es-Salaam, and Harvard LawSchool, where he obtained a Doctorate of Ju-ridical Science in 1987. Mutua was appointedby the Government of Kenya as Chairman ofthe Task Force on the Establishment of a Truth,Justice, and Reconciliation Commission. Hismost recent publication is Kenya's Quest forDemocracy: Taming Leviathan (Boulder: LynneRienner Publishers, 2008).Jason Ralph, Defending the Societyof States: Why America Opposes theInternational Criminal Court andits Vision of World Society (OxfordUniv. Press 2007) 244 pages, ISBN9780199214310.An obviously controversial and novelinstitution, the International CriminalCourt attracts hyperbole from all sides.For United States policymakers during thepast fifteen years-remember the Clintonadministration was no golden age of ICCpolicy-the Court has been regardedas either an idealistic but ill-conceivedventure or as an outright threat, in thewords of one senator following the 1998Rome Conference, "a monster that mustbe slain."For its many supporters, the ICC isseen as a symbol of post-modern jus-tice, another nail in the coffin of thepost-Westphalian order in which states,not individuals, are the primary focus ofinternational law. From this perspective,the ICC offers a litmus test for a nation'sacknowledgment and commitment to thisnew international legal order. At one poleis the view of the ICC as an illegitimateand improper incursion on the right ofstates to judge violations of internationallaw committed by its citizens. At the otherpole is the modern view that dismissesthe territorial imperative of internationalcriminal law because every country, in-deed, every person in every country, hasan interest in prosecutions of the world'sworst crimes.Until the ICC actually began function-ing in Summer 2002, the pro-ICC andanti-ICC perspectives were fairly welldefined. These perspectives and theirbases are the subject of Jason Ralph'sbook Defending the Society of States:Why America Opposes the InternationalCriminal Court and its Vision of WorldSociety. Ralph, like many observers of2009

An Apology for a Pathological Brute (reviewing Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa\u27s Greatest Explorer (2007))

bepress Legal Repository

https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&amp;context=book_reviews

An Apology for a Pathological Brute (reviewing Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa\u27s Greatest Explorer (2007))

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law

bepress Legal Repository