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The establishment of schools aimed to educate young individuals for entry-level administrative roles within the colonial administrations. The White Father mission schools were overseen by the missionaries, who fulfilled the dual role of supervisors and educators. In the Upper Congo, the objective within the mission schools was to impart religious education and conduct moral monitoring. The schools served as a safeguard against perceived negative influences of African life.

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The Catholic missionaries used their power to convert the masses to their religion by making children go to school where they would push Catholicism or during catechumenate which is the preparation for baptism. The missions operated an extensive system of elementary schools while also actively promoting initiatives to establish secondary and college education. Their endeavors in education occasionally collided with colonial administrators' who feared the emergence of an enlightened indigenous population.

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The missionaries put an emphasis on early education, but the first missionaries in the Congo educated the working class. Another job of the missionaries that were sent to the Congo was to assist in hospitals.

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In 1906, the amount of missionary elementary schools were increasing. This is when they began to teach European languages (Dutch and French) in schools unlike in various other territories being colonized by other European countries like the German. French became the official language of the Congo during Leopold II reign but because Leopolds people did not fully support his need to obtain resources and power in the Congo, Belgians never made up more than 60 percent of the population. The strong push of the French language was just not practical.

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The Africans were considered to be lazy, slow and “slaves to their passion”. These inaccurate theories were a driving objective for the Belgian who believed it was their duty to educate and civilize the people of Congo. Unlike France, education was left up to the Catholic Church.

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Many mixed raced children (Metis) were kidnapped from their guardians and sent to live at missionaries. Marriage between a white and Black person was forbidden and their children were seen as burdens.

After reading, discuss with the person next to you if you think mix-raced Congolese people and their descent should be given reparations and what might that look like?

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Women taken from their mothers in Congo by Belgium now want justice

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Thousands of biracial children known as metis were taken away and raised in institutions

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"Out village got cloth and a little salt, but not the people who did the work. Our chiefs eat up the cloth; the workers got nothing. The pay was a fathom of cloth and a little salt for every big basketful, but it was given to the chief, never to them men. It used to take ten days to get the twenty baskets of rubber - we were always in the forest and then when we were late we were killed. We had to go further and further into the forest to find the rubber vines, to go without food, and our women had to give up cultivating the fields and gardens. Then we starved. Wild beasts - the leopards - killed some of us when we were working away in the forest, and others got lost or died from exposure and starvation, and we begged the white men to leave us alone, saying we could get no more rubber, but the white men and their soldiers said: 'Go! You are only beasts yourselves, you are nyama (meat),' We tried, always going further into the forest, and when we failed and our rubber was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us. Many were shot, some had their ears cut off; others were tied up with ropes around their necks and bodies taken away. The white men sometimes at the posts did not know of the bad things the soldiers did to us, but it was the white men who sent the soldiers to punish us for not bringing in enough rubber"(60-61).

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In 1885, the Holy See* reserved Catholic evangelization in the Congo Free State for Belgian missionaries. The White Fathers Cardinal Lavigerie** initially served the region until a Belgian branch was was founded. The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Mary and Belgian Jesuits also joined the missions. Many Sisters from various religious institutions devoted their lives to the moral education of Congolese women.
* the universal government of the Catholic Church
** an international missionary society of priests and brothers founded in 1868

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Leopold II had something to prove. The money and status was more important to him than the treatment of the Congolese people.

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The forced labor also effected the agriculture leading to famine and starvation because all the able-bodied men were used to collect rubber and the women were often held as hostages.

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Violence and fear were key factors that allowed the colonizers to control millions of people and rip them away from their normals lives to serve a man and a country they had no connection to

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Collection

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Kasai, Congo

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Mayumbe, Congo

Luanda, Angola

Baringa, Congo

Luebo, Congo

Ikelemba, Congo

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San Tomé

Novo Redondo, Angola

Bangala, Congo

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Catumbela, Angola

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Collection > Alice Seeley Harris Archive Remove

Man walking up Borassus palm by means of loop of forest cane.

Tree ferns, Ikelemba forest

Cotton grown in Catumbella, Angola

Congo tree which bears fruit on its trunk

Mr. Harris in bamboo avenue at Lisala, Stanley Falls District

Birds' nest and grass from the Kasai

Palm tree in grip of parasite, Kasai River

Red blossom on trunk of tree, Kasai forest

Flowering palm at Lukolela, upper Congo

Parasite which grips the palm tree - in its early stage

Elephant plant in dry season

A field of white water-lilies, Maringa River

A Congo forest fruit, considered by the natives to resemble the imported pineapple, to which they give the same name

Acacia avenue at Barumba on main Congo. Opposite mouth of the Aruwimi

A bunch of young bananas with edible purple seed lobe

Henequen plant on roadside of San Thomé

Palm in grip of parasite

Young Borassus palm at Leopoldville

A bowl of white water-lilies, Maringa

A mango tree with fruit Leopoldville

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This archive collects the visual culture and narratives of contemporary antislavery, as well as heritage and public history projects that grapple with past and present slavery and antislavery. Its collections are a resource for understanding cultures of antislavery activism and protest memory.

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As the second king of Belgium, Leopold II was determined to have a big colony to establish his country as a global power.

Leopold II was able to convince the rest of the European powers to give him control of the Congo because he presented himself as a philanthropist and would bring to the Congo "civilization" and "Christianity" and that he would protect the right to free trade in his new colony. Because the Congo was not a coastal country, it was not as desirable to the rest of Europe. This gave Leopold II the perfect opportunity sweep in and privately own a colony that was 8 times the size of Belgium.

Leopold II and other Belgian officials and commanders in the Congo were secretive about how horribly they were treating the Congolese people. The truth wasn't known to anyone in Europe until the Casement Report was published and presented to parliament detailing the atrocities Roger Casement witnessed and heard about in the Congo Free State.

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Leopold II enslaved millions of Congolese people to make them gather impossible monthly quotas of rubber. If they didn't collect enough rubber they were tortured or executed. The soldiers even kidnapped the wives and children of the slaves and held them as hostages who would be killed if the slaves did not collect enough rubber.

At the time, guns and ammunition were expensive and the officers wanted to make sure the soldiers were only using the bullets to execute slaves, so they were required to cut off the hand of the person they executed as proof that their bullet was not wasted. If they used bullets for other purposes they would cut off the hands of living people to make up the numbers or else the officer would kill the soldier. Amputation was also used as punishment for not collecting enough rubber.

In the 40 year span of the Congo Free State, 10 million people died. That is 1/2 of the original population before Leopold II ruled.

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The main materials that were abundant in the Congo were palm oil, ivory, and rubber. Leopold II was originally focused on Ivory that was used to make material goods. After the invention of the tire, rubber was in high demand internationally.

The Congo rainforest had copious amount of natural rubber that was a specific species of rubber tree that could not be grown well in cultivation. Leopold II saw the opportunity to have a monopoly over the rubber market and make a fortune.

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The new districts were drawn without consideration of the original tribal divisions

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https://www.dlwaldron.com/CongoTribesmap.html

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Map of Districts in the Belgian Congo (from 1910)

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Map of Districts in the Belgian Congo (from 1910)

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https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/50853/carte-du-congo-belge-lebegue-cie

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https://www.britannica.com/place/Belgian-Congo

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Belgian Congo, French Congo Belge, former colony (coextensive with the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) in Africa, ruled by Belgium from 1908 until 1960. It was established by the Belgian parliament to replace the previous, privately owned Congo Free State, after international outrage over abuses there brought pressure for supervision and accountability. The official Belgian attitude was paternalism: Africans were to be cared for and trained as if they were children. They had no role in legislation, but traditional rulers were used as agents to collect taxes and recruit labour; uncooperative rulers were deposed. In the late 1950s, when France and the United Kingdom worked with their colonies to prepare for independence, Belgium still portrayed the Congo as an idyllic land of parent-child relationships between Europeans and Africans.

Belgian Congo Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Private European and American corporations invested heavily in the Belgian Congo after World War I. Large plantations (growing cotton, oil palms, coffee, cacao, and rubber) and livestock farms were developed. In the interior, gold, diamonds, copper, tin, cobalt, and zinc were mined; the colony became an important source of uranium for the United States during World War II. Africans worked the mines and plantations as indentured labourers on four- to seven-year contracts, in accordance with a law passed in Belgium in 1922. Roads, railroads, electric stations, and public buildings were constructed by forced labour.

African resistance challenged the colonial regime from the beginning. A rebellion broke out in several eastern districts in 1919 and was not suppressed until 1923. Anti-European religious groups were active by the 1920s, including Kimbanguism and the Negro Mission in the west and Kitawala in the southeast. Unrest increased in the depression years (1931-36) and during World War II. Because political associations were prohibited at the time, reformers organized into cultural clubs such as Abako, a Bakongo association formed in 1950. The first nationwide Congolese political party, the Congo National Movement, was launched in 1958 by Patrice Lumumba and other Congolese leaders. In January 1959, riots broke out in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) after a rally was held calling for the independence of the Congo. Violent altercations between Belgian forces and the Congolese also occurred later that year, and Belgium, which previously maintained that independence for the Congo would not be possible in the immediate future, suddenly capitulated and began making arrangements for the Congo's independence. The Congo became an independent republic on June 30, 1960.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy McKenna, Senior Editor.

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

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Belgian Congo (Congo Belge), the former colony in Africa that was ruled by Belgium from 1908 until June 30, 1960, when it became an independent republic; it is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Read here to learn more about the Belgian Congo.

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Bibliography

"Belgian Congo (Documentary)." Video. Youtube. Posted by TDC - World History Documentaries, January 3, 2019. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4TPwGfnpc4.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Congo Free State." Encyclopedia Britannica, January 26, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/place/Congo-Free-State.

Casement, Roger. Casement Report. 1904. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://archive.org/details/CasementReport/page/n28/mode/1up.

Harford, Tim. "The Horrific Consequences of Rubber's Toxic Past." BBC. Last modified July 24, 2019. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48533964.

Harris, Alice Seeley. Alice Seeley Harris Archive. http://antislavery.nottingham.ac.uk/ solr-search?facet=collection%3A%22Alice+Seeley+Harris+Archive%22.

Hochschild, Adam. "Leopold II." Britannica. Last modified May 22, 2023. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-II-king-of-Belgium.

Sen Nag, Oishimaya. "The Leading Natural Rubber Producing Countries in the World." World Atlas. Last modified April 25, 2017. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-leading-natural-rubber-producing-countries-in-the-world.html.

Barthel, Diane. "Women's Educational Experience under Colonialism: Toward a Diachronic Model." Signs 11, no. 1 (1985): 137–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174291.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "agglutination." Encyclopedia Britannica, February 10, 2009. https://www.britannica.com/topic/agglutination-grammar.

Independent Digital News and Media. (2020, July 1). Women taken from their mothers in Congo by Belgium now want Justice. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/congo-belgium-women-mothers-children-religious-mission-a9595631.html#comments-area

Rountree, Kathryn. "Catholic Missionaries in Africa: The White Fathers in the Belgian Congo 1950-1955." Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College. Last modified 2009. Accessed May 1, 2009. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4277&context=gradschool_theses#:~:text=The%20Belgian%20state%20relied%20heavily,a%20native%20Church%20in%20Africa.&text=better%20understand%20the%20Society%20as,its%20role%20in%20imperial%20Africa.

Vermeersch, A. "Congo." New Advent. Last modified 1908. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04228a.htm.

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- "In the interest of the natives all over Africa, we have to teach them to work."(Casement report. 4)

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The establishment of the Catholic Church occurred under Leopold II. Charles George Gordon, a British general famous for his heroism in defending Khartoum, Sudan, urged Leopold II to acquire Catholic missions.

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"The language of the Blacks is, radically, the agglutinative* speech of the Bantu peoples, i.e., it forms its words without fusion or alteration. It is divided into over forty very different dialects."
A description of the native language of the Congo before colonization, written in 1908.
*agglutination, a grammatical process in which words are composed of a sequence of morphemes (meaningful word elements), each of which represents not more than a single grammatical category.

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- Each district was under the control of a commissioner that was paid by the Belgian army
- Some districts had harsher punishments than others and people often fled those districts
- The Equator Province was known to be the cruelest district
- They had the saying "Rubber is death"
- Where the Belgian officers were staying was completely separate from the native populations