Tinted lantern slide showing Edmund D Morel, a leading campaigner against the atrocities commited against workers on rubber plantations in the Congo Free State, land owned by King Leopold II of Belgium. He sits at a desk overflowing with paper-work, behind a large map of Africa. Morel campaigned for an end to the expoloitation of native Congolese workers in the rubber plantations of the Congo Free State, owned by King Leopold II of Belgium. Whilst working for the Elder Dempster shipping line, Morel discovered the worthless goods being exchanged for rubber from the Congo Free State, and the large numbers of weapons being sent to Africa to control workers. Morel campaigned with the Congo Reform Association and British consul in the Congo, Roger Casement, for an investigation into the acts of slavery and violence committed on Congo rubber plantations. This slide was part of a set by Congo Balolo Mission missionary and photographer Alice Seely Harris, who with her husband John Harris used these slides in magic lantern shows across the country to bring the injustices against Congolese workers to public attention. 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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