ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that French missionaries, unlike their Belgian confreres, had great difficulty in assembling children for their missions. The missions of Belgian and French Catholics in central Africa shared a number of characteristics. French Catholicism was not only on the defensive in France, fighting against disestablishment at a time of vigorous secularizing republicanism and antireligious socialism. During the period covered in this book there were only three French mission stations north of St. Hippolyte de Brazzaville. Catholic missionary strategy required the placing of stations where a military presence assured safety from real or imagined attacks and protection from thieves. Children were used to pave the way for the establishment of missions on the Ubangi River. Children were moved about from one mission to another according to the desires of the missionaries, just as workers were moved about by all whites of the period.
