Stanley

As a soon-to-be teacher, I can't help looking at situations with those eyes. Besides that I just came out of a very passionate class where we were discussing students situations and fostering them....aka, I'm still wound up and Stanley's character has had me thinking for a while.

Hochschild tells the story of Stanley's early life. He is born a bastard child to a mother who doesn't seem to care about him because as a newborn, she leaves him with his uncles and grandfather. What kind of life would that have been for him? No caring, or at least not a whole lot, and living with people who believed that a boy needed a "sound whipping" if he misbehaved. Not only that, at five years old he was passed off to another family who also got rid of him by lying that he was going to visit "Aunt Mary," when in reality they were going to leave him at a workhouse!

I have constantly been amazed that a child like that went on to become a great explorer, successful in his choice of occupation. However, this also came about through lie after lie and disappointment after disappointment. He changed his name countless times and then when he desired to marry (after he had been sexually abused as a child), his fiances would take off on him and marry someone else!

I am also amazed that he wrote for the newspaper, yet constantly remind myself of the lies that he kept up, even when a good many people doubted the truth of his claims. So why wouldn't he be able to tell a story well enough to have it published in the newspaper.

I mentioned at the beginning that I look at this from a teacher-like perspective. I guess his story encourages me. Even when I have students who come from the worst family situations and maybe don't make the choices that I think are appropriate or even correct in society, that even these people can go on in life and be successful and amazing people. Stanley became a great explorer that was noticed by people in high places (Ruler of Belgium, King Leopold!!).

And then it makes me think to myself that I can do with life what I want, in a sense. Stanley decided that he didn't want to live the life that he was expected to because of his childhood. He decided that he wanted to be successful and do something exciting and new with his life. And when at first he didn't succeed, he tried again and again and made his life something that others read about.

Now I don't know if he was ever a real person, but his story can still inspire us all to do what our hearts desire and to become what we know we can be. We shouldn't ever let the world hold us back, because Stanley showed us that even the seemingly impossible can happen if we work at it with all of our being.

P.S. As I was looking for information to link to this blog, I found a blog that is maintained by a class of students in New York who read some of King Leopold's Ghost and had a few questions of their own to ask to the world.

Dutch & British Slave Trade

From the information I have found, it seems that the British were first attracted to Africa because of gold and ivory, not slaves. the Dutch followed them to Africa for this reason, as did many other nations such as France and Sweden. However the Dutch were more assertive than the British and made their way into the slave trade more quickly.

According to a JSTOR article on this topic, the Dutch slave trade in reality only consisted of about 5% of the total Atlantic slave trade and spanned over three periods of time from 1600 to 1800. During the first period, the slave trade transported the most slaves, apparently because the French and the English had not established their own slave trade.

In the beginning, the Dutch used larger, older ships to transport the slaves which resulted in large numbers of slave deaths, however this fact changed once those ships were banned and better ships were implemented to reduce mortality. Not only was the change in the ships responsible for reducing the morality, they also shortened the middle passage.

In Africa, both the Dutch and the British built forts. The Dutch were first with their fort at Elimina in 1642 and the British followed them with their fort at Kormatine in 1651 and ten years later another fort at Cape Castle. Constantly at war, the Dutch destroyed the British forts, except the largest one at Cape Castle. This didn't discourage the British, however, who were attracted back to Africa becuase of profits from the slave trade.

Yet even in this crazy fight for Africa, the British had their own problems back home. The public was astonished at the inhumanity of the slave trade and had it abolished in 1807. Yet this didn't end the British presence in the slave trade, only private companies. The British government was still involved.

The interesting thing that I found is that in February of 2006, the Anglicans apologized for their role in the African slave trade. They say they recognize that they were responsible for what happened to many slaves because they were at the heart of what was happening in Africa during that time.