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.

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.

Although the Rear Column finally received some of the Manyema porters, it had only got as far as Banalya when the Major threatened a woman with his revolver because she was beating a drum during a ceremony in the early hours of the morning.

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.

[6] Bonny's comments, however, have been regarded with scepticism by historians who have studied the expedition, on account of his habitual dishonesty, his doctoring of his old diary entries, and his opium addiction.

Furious, Stanley mainly blamed Barttelot for the failure of the Rear Column, though he also criticised the other officers for allowing him to "kick, strike and slay human beings".

[10] Hochschild also considers him a likely source, since he "went mad, began hitting, whipping, and killing people, and was finally murdered", but also thinks that other participants in the expedition and contemporary figures contributed to the character.