QUOTE : Stanley’s Congo expedition fired the starting gun for the Scramble for Africa. Before his trip, white outsiders had spent hundreds of years nibbling at Africa’s edges, claiming land around the coastline, but rarely venturing inland. Disease, hostile tribes and the lack of any clear commercial potential in Africa meant that hundreds of years after white explorers first circumnavigated its coastline, it was still referred to in mysterious terms as the Dark Continent, a source of slaves, ivory and other goods, but not a place white men thought worthy of colonisation. It was Leopold’s jostling for the Congo that forced other European powers to stake claims to Africa’s interior, and within two decades the entire continent had effectively been carved up by the white man. The modern history of Africa – decades of colonial exploitation and post-independence chaos – was begun by a Telegraph reporter battling down the Congo River.