A Congo Chattel; the Story of an African Slave Girl

by Henry D. Campbell

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256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1917

Reviews

[Shovelmonkey1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique perspective of a terrible part of European history which is poorly documented and frequently overlooked. The Belgian occupation of the Congo was, in many ways different to other European countries invasion and annexation of other African countries. None of these occupations/annexations/protectorates were good. All ended in enslavement, abuse, exploitation and death with millions of people suffering at the hands of the empire building west. The Congo was different because the Congo did not really belong to the Belgians in the same way that the Brits took South Africa or parts of the Middle East or the Italians in Eritrea or the French in north Africa.

Here King Leopold II took the Congo in his own name, not that of Belgium. This meant that effectively he created the laws, set precedents, exported some of the worst and most violent men at his disposal and set about controlling and exploiting the huge natural wealth, particularly the availability of rubber, to line his personal coffers. Did Belgium see all this filter down into their banks? Nope it all went directly to the King and no one was any the wiser for quite a long time (although you would imagine the huge spate of palace building might have caused at least one person to raise an eyebrow as Leopold was a man who liked to splash the cash).

This book was written in 1916 (yes, last century, not 200 years ago) and tells the story of a girl encountered by the missionaries who worked in the Congo during the Belgian Occupation. Lelo is the slave girl in question in this book and it documents her tribal life, slavery and trial as a witch as well as her introduction to Christianity via a Mission station set up near her village.

This book was designed to serve a specific political purpose, and its agenda was to encourage Christian Europeans to support the missions to the Congo where there were plenty of people of needed to be "saved", at least in the opinion of the colonial white English and Belgian settlers anyway. If you are not a fan of slightly patronising colonial attitudes and Christianity in general then you probably won't derive much enjoyment from this book. Thelanguage and special turns of pious phrase coupled with the innate belief that the missionaries were undoubtedly doing the right thing and that it was their god-given duty to help the people regardless of whether they had ever requested help of a spiritual nature or not is annoying and frustrating. But it is a very interesting and thought provoking first hand account once you get round the fact that not one person ever stopped and asked themselves why Christianity was a better route for the people of the Congo when so far all the so-called Christian settlers had brought to the Congo was death, disease and social displacement.

[penelopewanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by a missionary, this has a clear agenda. The skipped pages in this edition were indeed quite off-putting I found. Likewise in my opinion the illustrations were wasted pages as I couldn't discern much at all. Still, it was interesting to read more on this theme.