Richard Dorsey Loraine Mohun (April 12, 1864 – July 13, 1915) was an American explorer, diplomat, mineral prospector and mercenary. Mohun worked for the United States government as a commercial agent in Angola and the Congo Free State. During his time as commercial agent, he volunteered to command a unit of Belgian artillery in a campaign to force Arab slavers from the colony.
Mohun remained in the service of the US government during this time and was subsequently posted as consul to Zanzibar. In this capacity, he was called upon to act as an intermediary between the combatants in the Anglo-Zanzibar War. Following the conclusion of his three-year posting, Mohun returned to the Congo to prospect for minerals, and later worked with the Belgian authorities.
His most ambitious undertaking was a three-year expedition, beginning in 1898, that laid a telegraph line from Lake Tanganyika to Stanley Falls. He then spent some time prospecting in South Africa before returning to the Congo to reform the Abir Congo Company on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium.
Early life
Richard Dorsey Mohun was born in Washington, D.C., on April 12, 1864. Mohun's family had a long association with Africa - his grandfather, William McKenny, had been a prominent figure during the colonisation of the continent and built up a comprehensive collection of photographs during his time there. Mohun, who was privately tutored at the family home, is known to have seen these photographs whilst growing up. Mohun developed an interest in the slave trade, which continued under Arab control in Eastern and Southern Africa, and became the fourth member of his family to campaign for its eradication. Mohun's sister, Lee intended to train as a nun to join a Catholic mission in the Congo, where the slavers were active, and was only dissuaded by her family who asked her to minister to African-Americans in Washington instead.
Mohun received a commission in the Pay Corps of the United States Navy in 1881 and served on a four-year cruise in the Mediterranean. His grandmother, religious writer Anna Hanson Dorsey, arranged for him to meet her acquaintance, Monsignor Denis J. O'Connell, at the Pontifical North American College in Rome in 1885. Mohun was appointed Assistant Paymaster in 1885 and served with the United States Department of the Navy upon his return from the cruise. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1889, the same year he resigned his navy commission to join the United States Department of State.
Mohun and his brother, Louis, were involved in the short-lived Nicaragua Canal Construction Company, a private American enterprise seeking link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Louis had been on survey expeditions with the company since 1888 and construction works began at Corinto in 1890. Richard secured a position as an auditor with the company's transportation division by 1891 but the project was hit by tropical disease and the Mohuns returned home to Washington by January 1892.
United States agent in the Congo
The well-connected Anna Hanson Dorsey was close friends with the mother of the American Secretary of State James Blaine and Blaine and Dorsey shared ties with Notre Dame University. Dorsey was able to use this influence to arrange the appointment of Mohun as US commercial agent to the Congo Free State on 22 January 1892, filling a vacancy caused by the death-in-post of US Navy Lieutenant Emory Taunt the previous year. The US had maintained an agent in the Congo ever since it had been formally recognised and the commercial agent also acted as the nation's diplomatic representative to the Free State. The post came with a $5,000 annual budget and a remit to investigate the commercial potential of Congo and to promote trade between the two countries, which previously had been almost non-existent. Mohun was appointed ahead of the missionary Samuel Norvell Lapsley who had been championed by a state senator from Alabama.