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Growing out of a tradition of charity to one's neighbors or dependents as a religious and social duty, the movement to abolish the slave trade inaugurated British humanitarianism directed to the suffering of distant strangers. Abolitionists saw the world as their responsibility, a perspective carried forward by other groups through the present. The Congo reform movement of 1890-1913 built on Victorian experience and pioneered a more popular and multifaceted overseas humanitarianism. Although historians have not studied Congo reform in the context of humanitarianism, its origins and success lie not only in the work of particular individuals, but in the structure of British voluntary humanitarian associations and in British society. This legacy helps us understand its triumph, with all its flaws, in the context of volunteers' motives, the movement's methods, and its outcomes.
The Congo Reform Movement
King Leopold II of Belgium, the proprietor or king-sovereign of the Congo Free State from 1885-1908, made a fortune from Congo ivory and rubber. All lands not actively cultivated or inhabited by Africans became Leopold's property, in some places granted to a concession company in exchange for fees and an ownership stake. In remote districts, away from prying eyes, a few Europeans backed by an impressed African army terrorized villages to deliver rubber, provisions, and men. The massive disruption of local society, tendency of the system to encourage violent behavior in the pursuit of profits, and the consequent death toll made the Free State a dramatic and tragic example of colonial exploitation and oppression.1
The movement for reform started when the London-based Aborigines' Protection Society took up the cause. Despite the Society's efforts, the British government would not act. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, was reluctant to interfere in another country's business and felt that no colonial power's hands - even Britain's - were altogether clean. The movement for reform accelerated when E. D. Morel, a shipping clerk, compared the falsified official reports of the Free State with shipping records and rubber sales. Far from being a loss-making enterprise, as Leopold complained, the Free State was reaping a hidden fortune for its proprietor on the scale of £500,000 in a single two-year period (1899-1900), or over £40,000,000 ($70,000,000) in today's money.2 Finding the Free State's imports composed primarily...