15/09/2021 22:07 Men of the Nsongo District · Antislavery Usable Past

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15/09/2021 22:07 Men of the Nsongo District · Antislavery Usable Past

Men of the Nsongo District

Antislavery International , 1911-1912

Men of the Nsongo District (ABIR concession) with hands of two of their countrymen Lingomo and Bolenge murdered by
rubber sentries of ABIR Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company in May 1904. The two European men are Mr Stannard and
Mr Harris of the Congo Balolo Mission at Baringa. This image (Neg. 119) formed part of the Harris Lantern Slide
Collection. Under King Leopold II the Congo Free State used mass forced labour to extract rubber from the jungle for the
European market. As consumer demand grew King Leopold II's private army - the Force Publique - used violent means to
coerce the population into meeting quotas, including murder, mutilation, rape, village burning, starvation and hostage taking.
Alice Seeley Harris and her husband Reverend John H. Harris were missionaries in the Congo Free State from the late
1890s. Alice produced a collection of images documenting the horrific abuses of the African rubber labourers. Her
photographs are considered to be an important development in the history of humanitarian campaigning. The images were
used in a number of publications. The Harrises also used the photographs to develop the Congo Atrocity Lantern Lecture
which toured Britain and the the USA raising awareness of the issue of colonial abuses under King Leopold II's regime.
Source: Antislavery International.

Organisation

Antislavery International

Country

Nsongo, Congo

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Theme

Photography,
Colonialism

Location

Nsongo, Congo

Tags

Abir, African man, Alice Seeley Harris, Alice Seeley Harris Archive, Anglo-Belgian India, Anglo-Belgian India
Rubber Company, Bolenge, colonialism, Edgar Stannard, European man, John Harris, lecture, Lingomo,
missionary, Nsongo, photograph, rubber, trade, violence

Congo Atrocity Lantern Lecture

Background

About the Collection

 

The ‘Congo Atrocity Lantern Lecture’ was a campaigning devise used by the Congo Reform Association to raise awareness in
Britain of the brutal labour regime which took place when the Congo Free State was the personal possession of King Leopold
II during the period 1884-1908. The lantern slides included a range of images which represented different experiences of
enslavement from transatlantic slavery through to conditions in the Congo Free State. Some of the lantern slides reproduced
photographs taken by the British missionary Alice Seeley Harris which depicted the violence and mutilation inflicted on the
local population in pursuit of rubber.

The Congo Reform Association was founded in 1904 by Edmund Dene Morel and Roger Casement to highlight the issue of
exploitation in the Congo Free State. Despite their efforts the initial public success of the campaign had started to wane. In
1905 Alice Seeley Harris and her husband John returned from the Congo Balolo Mission where they had been posted and
began to take an active role in the Congo Reform Association. The Harrises offered a solution for reanimating the campaign
– a lantern lecture tour that would showcase Alice’s photography and incorporate elements of the popular missionary
speaking tours that had been used to evangelise across Britain and the United States.

The lantern lecture shows utilized the popularity of the genre as a form of mass entertainment. Using missionary networks it
was shown in chapels and meeting houses across Britain. The lantern slides were accompanied by a lecture which was
delivered by the Congo missionaries. As the shows grew in popularity it became necessary to develop a standard narration
that could be delivered by any speaker. The standard lecture focused on the idea that the Congo Free State represented a
corruption of the spirit of empire rather than an acute symptom of a structure that was inherently unjust. The accompanying
lecture notes made it clear that African people and their culture should not to be regarded as equal to that of the Europeans.
The lecture expressed sentiments framed by a belief in Britain’s empire as part of the ‘civilising mission’ – this was an attempt
to remake colonised people in the image of the coloniser. Far from anti-colonial the lecture reinforced the need to participate
in the imperial project, particularly in relation to spreading Christianity through the establishment of more mission outposts.

Guide for users

 

You can search the images using geographic location. The original spelling of the place names contained within the caption
have been used for the title of the image, however, some place names have changed their spelling over time e.g. ‘Loanda’ and
‘Luanda’. ‘Tags’ have used the modern spelling of the place name. Items are tagged with place names from the period as well

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as the modern place name e.g. ‘Leopoldville’ and ‘Kinshasa’. You can search via ‘Country’ - the place where the image was
produced e.g. ‘Angola’. You can search the ‘Tags’ for a particular region, city, or village e.g. ‘Kasai’.

The images have been tagged using generalised description of the individuals who feature in them e.g. ‘African child’ or
‘European man’. These terms are inadequate as they do not allow for the specificity that should be attributed to individual
subjectivity, they also remove peoples’ right to self-definition. The captions for the images do not contain the detailed
information about the sitters which would allow for a greater degree of clarity. Judging a person’s race or ethnicity based on a
photograph risks wrongly attributing or imposing meaning, however, in order to make the archive searchable these terms
have been used.

Each image has a zoom function will allows the viewer to examine the photograph in detail. If you click on the image you can
navigate with the zoom to look at an individual’s stance, expression, and other details. Humanitarian photography has
employed techniques which have tended to erase the individual and present a suffering mass. The zoom function has been
included so that viewers can engage with the people represented as individuals.

The ‘Congo Atrocity Lantern Lecture’ used a selection of photographs from a wider collection of 509 images created by Alice
Seeley Harris. To view the full collection you can search ‘Related Items’ or you can click through to the ‘Alice Seeley Harris
Archive’.

Both the original ‘Alice Seeley Harris Archive’ and the ‘Congo Atrocity Lantern Lecture’ represented African people through
the colonial gaze. In replicating these archives we are very aware of the potential to reinstate that particular way of seeing
difference. In order to make sure that this mode of representation is balanced by material which is self-representative we have
commissioned two projects ‘Decomposing the Colonial Gaze: Yole!Africa’ and ‘You Should Know Me: Photography and the
Congolese Diaspora’. You can search ‘Alternative Tags’, or you can click through to these collections to find new material
which has been inspired by and critically engages with the historic archive.

The project has also collaborated closely with the Antislavery Knowledge Network, which is based at the University of
Liverpool, and seeks community-led strategies for creative and heritage-based interventions in sub-Saharan Africa.

Copyright and takedown policy

Copyrights to all resources are retained by Antislavery International, who have kindly made their collections available for
educational and non-commercial use only. All efforts have been made to obtain copyright permission for materials featured
on this site. If you are aware of instances where the rights holder(s) has not been given an appropriate credit, please let us
know. If you hold the rights to any item(s) included in this resource and oppose to its use, please contact us to request its
removal from the website.

Contact
 

Email: antislaveryusablepast@gmail.com

Acknowledgements
 

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This archive would not have been possible without the generous access given to the project by Antislavery International. In
particular we would like to thank Dr Aidan McQuade and Dr Anna Shepherd. The digitisation was completed by Autograph
ABP. Thanks to the London School of Economics for their kind permission to reproduce the lantern lecture notes.
Discussions about this project were greatly enhanced by conversations with Dr Mark Sealy (Director, Autograph ABP) and
Dr Richard Benjamin (International Slavery Museum). Congolese artist Sammy Baloji offered unique insights into the
relationship between past and present forms of representation. This project was supported by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council. Further thanks go to the Antislavery Knowledge Network, based at the University of Liverpool.

Further reading
 

Kevin Grant, ‘Christian critics of empire: Missionaries, lantern lectures, and the Congo reform campaign in Britain’, Journal
of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 29:2, (2001), pp. 27-58

Dean Pavlakis, British humanitarianism and the Congo reform movement, 1896-1913 (Surrey: Ashgate, 2015)

Andrew Porter, ‘Sir Roger Casement and the international humanitarian movement’, Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History, 29:2 (2001), pp. 59-74

Links
 

Archive of Edmund Dene Morel held at the London School of Economics

Antislavery Knowledge Network, University of Liverpool

More in this collection...

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