ABSTRACT
For cases of African mistreatment, the Congo reform campaign focused on the victims of the rubber regime in upper-river territories of the Congo Free State. After months of speculating on the extent of bloodshed in these parts, the British consul Roger Casement finally received permission to investigate in the vast hinterland of Leopold’s empire. Famously, Morel formed the Congo Reform Association on the back of Casement’s report, while Leopold commissioned his own tripartite touring inquiry, the findings of which hastened the Congo’s cession to Belgium. Casement’s decisive intervention extended consular practices beyond the norms of the imperial mandate by taking human interest in the subjects of another empire. Chapter 2 takes an alternative route through Casement’s report, following not the traditional political or biographical avenues but the local human agencies which awaited the consul and placed themselves at his disposal. It examines the input of Congo-born guides, testifiers, and translators, separating out their stories, as far as possible, from the consul’s own. The role of African-born evangelists in generating evidence of violence is discussed. Attention is paid to Casement’s interactions with evangelists at Bolobo, Bonginda, and Ikoko. Particular attention is paid to Casement’s time spent in the vicinity of Lake Tumba, where, with the help of African staff at the Ikoko mission, he acquired a mass of evidence, including the extraordinary and detailed testimonies of five girls and young women who survived the so-called rubber ‘wars’ which blighted the region in the 1890s. I reveal the crucial input of individual evangelists and mission staff such as Frank Teva Clark, Vinda Bidiloa, and Lena F. Clark in generating these and other testimonies. Biographical interpretations focused on the political motivations of Casement’s tour have arguably helped to obscure the consul’s indebtedness to local informants. By identifying the role of African agents in the Congo reform process, my chapter highlights the Eurocentrism of prevailing historical narratives of Congo reform.
