Edmund Musgrave Barttelot (28 March 1859 – 19 July 1888) was a British army officer, who became notorious after his allegedly brutal and deranged behaviour during his disastrous command of the rear column in the Congo during Henry Morton Stanley's Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He has often been identified as one of the sources for the character of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's 1899 novel Heart of Darkness.
Life
Barttelot was born in Petworth, West Sussex, the second son of Sir Walter Barttelot, 1st Baronet and his first wife, Harriet Musgrave. He attended Sandhurst before receiving a commission in the 7th Regiment of Foot on 22 January 1879 at the age of 19. Barttelot served in the British Raj before fighting in the Second Anglo-Afghan War and the Anglo–Egyptian War. During the Nile Expedition of 1884–85, he joined the Camel Corps on their march to Khartoum, and caused some controversy by shooting an Aden man who attempted to vandalise a waterskin and struck Barttelot with a stick.
In 1886, he volunteered for Henry Morton Stanley's Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. As Stanley's second in command, he was leader of the Rear Column which was left at Yambuya on the Aruwimi River to wait for more porters to be brought by the Arab slave trader Tippu Tip while Stanley marched on to reach Emin as soon as possible. During Stanley's absence, the Rear Column descended into confusion. Barttelot was unable to maintain discipline, and resorted to repeated floggings of Africans, at least two of whom died from the beatings.
Stanley received reports about Barttelot's behaviour from other officers. One, William Bonny, said that "the least thing caused the Major to behave like a fiend" and that he would repeatedly stab African workers with a steel-pointed cane, bit a woman, and tried to poison an Arab chief. Another officer, John Rose Troup, said that the Major "had an intense hatred of anything in the shape of a black man".
Modern historians have generally accepted the negative assessment of Barttelot. Adam Hochschild wrote that after being left in charge of the Rear Column,
Barttelot has been portrayed as a model for Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. Jerry Allen considered him the principal historical model, though Harold Bloom argued that there was no single model, and that many of Kurtz's actions were more likely to be based on Barttelot's contemporary Tippu Tip.
See also
- Barttelot baronets