Introduction

Given the opportunity to speak out about their subjection under colonial rule, African populations in the Congo Free State did so. Their words and actions, moreover, provided an impetus for political change. The place of Congolese testifiers at the heart of the movement for colonial reform has been obscured in previous historical research. To bring it to light, the Introduction develops a nuanced and troubled understanding of the key concepts of agency and testimony. It contextualises African testimonies in the movement for Congo reform by outlining the broad characteristics of colonial rule in the Congo Free State, and of the humanitarian movement against it. To understand how and why Congolese testifiers bore witness despite the dangers posed by an extraordinarily violent regime, it is important to take a detailed look at transcultural contacts between the various European and African groups that comprised society in this colony. Humanitarian audiences at times shared with colonial officials doubts at the truth-value of African testimonies, and indeed careful attention must be paid to the circumstances in which Congolese contributed to the making of evidence. However, it is vital to recognise and understand this input, because even sympathetic histories of the Congo Free State such as Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998) have tended to repeat the late-nineteenth-century tendency of prioritising European agency and voice. In this respect, despite its much-maligned racism, Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (1899) continues to influence critical studies. This book identifies an alternative mode of cultural production in the contexts of which Conrad writes through the analysis of a corpus of African testimonies on colonialism. An outline of chapters begins to give shape to this corpus.