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The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition of 1886 to 1889 was one of the last major European expeditions into the interior of Africa in the nineteenth century, ostensibly to the relief of Emin Pasha, General Charles Gordon's besieged governor of Equatoria, threatened by Mahdist forces. The expedition was led by Henry Morton Stanley and came to be both celebrated for its ambition in crossing "darkest Africa", and notorious for the deaths of so many of its members and the disease unwittingly left in its wake. ==Anxiety about Equatoria== The Mahdists captured Khartoum in 1885 and Egyptian administration of the Sudan collapsed, and the extreme southern province Equatoria was nearly cut off from the outside world, located as it was on the upper reaches of the Nile near Lake Albert. Emin Pasha was a German doctor and naturalist who had been appointed Governor of Equatoria. He was able to send and receive letters via Buganda and Zanzibar and had been informed in February 1886 that the Egyptian government would abandon Equatoria. In July, he was encouraged by missionary Alexander Mackay to invite the British government to annex Equatoria itself. The government was not interested in such a doubtful venture, but the British public came to see Emin as a second General Gordon in mortal danger from the Mahdists. Scottish businessman and philanthropist William Mackinnon had been involved in various colonial ventures, and by November he had approached Stanley about leading a relief expedition. Stanley declared himself ready "at a moment's notice" to go. Mackinnon then approached J. F. Hutton, a business acquaintance also involved in colonial activities, and together they organized the "Emin Pasha Relief Committee", mostly consisting of Mackinnon's friends, whose first meeting was on 19 December 1886. The Committee raised a total of about £32,000. Stanley was officially still in the employment of Léopold II of Belgium, by whom he had been employed in carving out Léopold's 'Congo Free State'. As a compromise for letting Stanley go, it was arranged in a meeting in Brussels between Stanley and the king, that the expedition would take a longer route up the Congo River, contrary to plans for a shorter route inland from the eastern African coast. In return, Léopold would provide his Free State steamers for the transportation of the expedition up the river, from Stanley Pool (now Pool Malebo) as far as the mouth of the Aruwimi River. By 1 January 1887, Stanley was back in London preparing the expedition to widespread public acclaim. Stanley himself was intent that the expedition be one of humanitarian assistance rather than of military conquest. He declared: :"The expedition is non-military--that is to say, its purpose is not to fight, destroy, or waste; its purpose is to save, to relieve distress, to carry comfort. Emin Pasha may be a good man, a brave officer, a gallant fellow deserving of a strong effort of relief, but I decline to believe, and I have not been able to gather from any one in England an impression, that his life, or the lives of the few hundreds under him, would overbalance the lives of thousands of natives, and the devastation of immense tracts of country which an expedition strictly military would naturally cause. The expedition is a mere powerful caravan, armed with rifles for the purpose of insuring the safe conduct of the ammunition to Emin Pasha, and for the more certain protection of his people during the retreat home. But it also has means of purchasing the friendship of tribes and chiefs, of buying food and paying its way liberally." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Emin Pasha Relief Expedition」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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