The first chapter of the book is devoted to Hochschild’s exploration of the boy, John Rowlands, who would eventually become the famous African explorer, Henry Morton Stanley. Just as he does for Leopold in the second chapter, Hochschild provides a fairly detailed account of Stanley’s birth, childhood, and young adulthood in order to account for how he becomes the man who oversaw the early phase of the creation of Leopold’s Congo. His abandonment and abuse as a child is offered as the reason for his ability to perpetrate violence on such a large scale as an adult. 

Also key to Stanley’s characterization is Hochschild’s description of his tendency toward deceit. In his early life, Stanley’s lies seemed motivated by shame about his illegitimate birth (shame that was likely compounded by the sexual abuse he endured as a child in the workhouse); he makes up stories about experiences that paint him as a stronger, braver, better person. As Stanley matures, his lies get bigger as well. He doesn’t just tell fabricated stories about himself, he makes up entirely new personas, so that by the time he is a young man, he has renamed himself and exchanged his Welsh origin for an American one, fought on both sides of the American Civil War, and is well on his way to making a profession out of making up stories about his experiences that paint him as a stronger, braver, and better person than he is.