Black and white lantern slide showing a male missionary from the Congo Balolo Mission holding the arm of a Congolese man. The missionary is probably Mr Wallbaum, who wears a light safari suit and a pith helmet, and the Congolese man wears a loin cloth. The missionary holds up his companion's arm at the elbow, and points to the Congolese man's missing hand. The Congolese man is likely to have been a victim of the "Congo atrocities", punishment, murders and mutilations (particularly amputation of the right hand on living victims or after death) that took place on colonial rubber plantations in the Congo Free State, territory owned by Belgian King Leopold II, who expolited it for its plant and mineral resources. Workers on rubber plantations were paid with worthless goods, and it was in noticing this imbalance of trade that shipping clerk Edmund Morel reported in his columns for The West African Mail, noticing that large numbers of weapons were going into the country to control the rubber workers. An investigation took place in the British Parliament, but missionaries felt that they could do nothing in the face of veiled threats by King Leopold II, on whose territory thet were preaching. In 1895, Dr Harry Guinness heard first hand witness accounts of amputations, and became involved in the cause to end the brutality on the plantations, involving himself in the Congo Reform Association in 1904. International intervention forced Leopold II to abdicate in the same year, and although reforms began under his successor, Albert, change in the rubber plantations would not take effect for some time. This slide comes from a collection generated by missionaries working for the Congo Balolo Mission, a mission begun in 1889 under the supervision of the East London Training Institute for Home and Foreign Missions that developed into the interdenominational evangelical mission Regions Beyond Missionary Union after 1900.
Format
lantern slides 8.2 x 8.2cm lantern slides photographs
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