The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition was a caravan led by Henry Stanley that crossed central Africa in the late 1880s. The caravan’s variable access to food was a significant factor in the problems of death, disease, and poor productivity that it faced. Application of the concept of entitlement to the severe hunger experienced on the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition reveals new things about the operation of caravans at a time of imperial expansion. It also raises questions about the concept itself and the use made of it by historians of Africa. Can entitlement, developed through Amartya Sen’s study of 20th-century famines, be used to study famines in late 19th-century east-central Africa? This paper examines questions raised by the application of different versions of the entitlement approach to hunger on the Expedition. It also proposes a way to incorporate what Sen called illegal transfers, such as theft and looting, into the entitlement approach, increasing the concept’s utility for the study of past and present hunger. The study indicates that various uses of power played a crucial role in maintaining and in changing direct, exchange, and extended entitlements to food. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
