The politics of philanthropy: The Congo terror regime and the British public sphere, 1884--1914

Belgian King Leopold II's rule in the Congo Free State embodied the worst abuses of European imperialism in Africa. In order to condemn Leopold's abuses and ameliorate the living and working conditions of indigenous people, the Congo reform campaign emerged in Britain. While the key figures of reform can be located within a liberal-radical tradition of anti-imperialism, the campaign was apolitical and non-sectarian. Through public oratory, print journalism and graphic pictures, missionaries, journalists and other reformers appealed to all religious creeds and political persuasions within British civil society. In this endeavour, emotive photographs and the melodramatic tropes of the "new journalism" were utilized to evoke universal sympathy for Congo reform. In providing a legitimizing counterbalance to state authority Congo reformers represented "the people" or "the public" as a united and unanimous entity to the Foreign Office. Reformers articulated their campaign in the language of humanitarianism, which intersected with discourses of anti-slavery, liberty, human rights, patriotism, duty, and constitutionalism. In the process they imagined a humane British national and imperial identity and contributed to the invention of a British humanitarian tradition through selective reference to Britain's role in slave abolition. This fortified notions of British moral superiority, which in turn justified British imperialism. But at the same time, the Congo atrocities brought European imperialism into disrepute and encouraged sympathy for non-western cultures and tolerance for cultural and racial difference. The key to reform was envisioned as the extension of natural rights to Africans; in particular property rights were to be based upon indigenous modes of communal land tenure. In contrast to the direct administration of the "new imperialism" Congo reformers advocated an imperialism of informal rule.