Light on the Dark Continent: The Photography of Alice Seely
Harris and the Congo Atrocities of the Early Twentieth Century
T. Jack Thompson
I King Leopold's Soliloquy,
n 1905Ma rk Twain published
carried out a thorough inves tiga­
an
tion in 1903 into allegations of bru­
tality and wrote a detailed report for
imaginary rumination by the Bel­
gian king on th e troubles caused
the British govern me nt that had con­
him by those campaigning against
side rable impact on future British
his administration in the Congo Free
policy."Finall y, E. D. Morel, the key
State. Part of Leopold's fictional
figure in the fight aga ins t Leopold' s
meditation is on th e difficulties
policies in the Con go, founded th e
caused him by the evid enc e of the
Congo Reform Association, which
camera.Twain has him lament: "The '
did much to bring about th e even­
Kodak ha s been a sore calamity to
tual transfer of th e Con go from
us. The mo st pow erful enemy th at
Leopold' s personal control to th e
has confronted us. . . . The only
Belgian go vernment.
witness I hav e encountered in my
In th e light of such an array of
long career that I couldn't bribe."!
talent and ende av or, th e contribu­
A few yea rs earlier, in 1902, the
tion of Alice Harris (or indeed th at
Scottish missionary James Stewart
of her hu sband, John) to the cause of
delivered his Duff Missionary Lec­
'1 Congo reform might seem of lim­
tures in Edinburgh. Reflecting on
.l ited significanc e. In fact, her contri­
the atrocities in th e Congo at th e
bution to the struggle both in photo­
Alice Seely Harris, missionarq photographer.
time, Stewart observed: "The re is
graph and in print wa s substantial.
Photograph by J. Bell and Son. From Regions
always a suspicion that details of
Harris's photographs were featured
Beyond, January/February 1908, following p. 22.
this kind [ab out mutilation and othe r
on several contine nts both as book
atrocities] are sens ationally exaggerated. Photographs, how­ illustrations and as ma gic-lantern slides, the latt er often at hu ge
ever, gene rally tell their story with brutal fidelity, bein g un abl e public meetings to protest Leopold's policies in th e Congo.
to do othe rw ise, and readers will find some that will illu strate th e
The process colloquially kn own as th e scra mble for Afr ica
nature of th e ad ministration beyond di spute.'?
accelerated after th e Berlin Act of 1885, signed by the major
Almost certainly both Tw ain and Stewart were spea king European powers. Earlier, however, King Leopold of Belgium
specifically of the photographs of Alice Seely Harris, an Eng lish had alread y begun to establish in the Congo what was, in essen ce,
mis sionary with the Congo Balolo Mission. Harris took hun­ a personal fiefdom financ ed by others.The expe nses of Leopold 's
dreds of photos during this per iod , many of them d ocumenting Congo were lar gely borne by the peoples of the Congo itself and
atrocities carried out either directly or indirectly by the Co ngo by the Belgian populace; the profits we nt substantially to Leopold
authorities in their ha ste to maximize profits from the fast­ himself. On April 22, 1884, the United State s became th e first
developing rubber trade.
major country to recogni ze Leopold 's claims'? Som e months
Alice Seely was born in 1870 and married John Harris in later, in November 1884, the Berlin Conference reco gni zed the
1898, just before both of them dep arted from England as mission­ legitimacy of th e Int ernational Association of the Congo, which
aries to the Congo . At that tim e the nature of Leop old ' s rule in the soon became the Co ngo Free State. Ironically , th e title in French
Congo wa s beginning to eme rge in Europe and North Am erica. was l'Etat Indep endant du Congo, the Congo Independent State.
A host of personalities, many of th em well-known int ernation­ What thi s meant in practice wa s that Leop old wanted the Congo
ally , help ed to bring th e Con go atro cities to th e att enti on of a to be ind ep endent of all outside control and criti cism. Neither the
wider public. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famous as the crea tor of Congolese peopl es nor the Belgian parliament were to have any
Sherlock Holmes, wrote a pamphlet, The Crime of the Congo? effective control over his actions th ere.
Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness-today on e of the most­
Leopold employe d a whole range of explorers and ad ven ­
di scussed African texts in postcolonial stud ies- was based on turers to help him explore and exploit the Cong o. One of these
six months he spent in the Con go in 1890.4 William H. She phe rd, was Henry Morton Stanley, after whom seve ral natural features
the first African-American to become a Presbyterian missionar y of the ar ea we re subse quently named . In the first few years of
to th e Congo and th e subject of the recent book Black Livingstone, occupat ion , the ma in export from the Cong o wa s ivory, but by
reported so frankly on the atrocities he witnessed in Kasai the earl y 1890s Leopold had become aware of the hu gely expa nd ­
Province that in 1909 he and his colleague William M. Morri son ing world market for rubber, ma inl y becau se of the inv enti on of
were put on trial in the Co ngo (and later acquitted) ," Roger the inflatable rubber tire by John Dunlop in Belfast in 1890.
Casement, the Irish-born British diplomat later execu ted by the Inflatable tires were used first for th e bicycle and subseque ntly
British for treason during the 1916 Easter Risin g in Ireland, for th e automobil e.
In the tw enti eth century in other parts of Afri ca and in Latin
Jack Thompson, Senior Lecturerin the History of World Christianity at New America, cultivat ed rubber wa s to becom e a major cash crop. In
College, University of Edinburgh, is presently researching the impact of the Congo of the 1890s, however, th e rubber Leopold soug ht to
missionary photography in Africa.
exploit was wild rubber, growing in the form of vines in the for est
146
I NTE RN ATIO N AL B ULLETIN O F MISSION ARY R ESEARC H
International Bulletin
and harvested with much difficulty. Wild rubber could be har­
vested in commercially significant amounts only with the labor,
voluntary or otherwise, of the local populations. They were paid
a pittance, usually in kind rather than cash, and as the task
became increasingly unpopular, the colonial administration or
its commercial arms developed more and more extreme methods
of coercion to maintain the level of rubber exports.
Monthly quotas were set for each village. Failure to meet
these quotas would lead to sanctions of varying severity. First
there was beating with the chikoti, a painful whip made of
hippopotamus hide; then women were held hostage and some­
times raped to ensure that their husbands harvested rubber. In
extreme cases, though the practice became increasingly com­
mon, people were killed as an example to their own or other
villages. Since European company officials seldom ventured far
beyond the main towns, a grotesque culture grew up for ensur­
ing both that the requisite punishments had been carried out and
that the forest guards had used their bullets "officially" on
humans, rather than for shooting game for their own pots. To be
certain about the use of bullets, the guards were instructed to cut
off the right hand of each person they killed and return it to the
European officials, who would tally the hands against the num­
ber of bullets used. Since the return journey could take many
days, if not weeks, severed hands were usually smoked over fires
to preserve them. In fact, as many of Alice Harris's photographs
later showed, clever forest guards would simply cut off the
hands from living people and save their cartridges for other
purposes.
Accounts of these atrocities began to filter back to Europe
and North America during the 1890s. George Washington Will­
iams, an African-American Baptist pastor, journalist, lawyer,
and first African-American to serve in the Ohio legislature,
visited the Congo in 1890.As a result of his visit he wrote an open
letter to King Leopold, highly critical of the king's administra­
tion. He also wrote a report for President Harrison and, in a letter
to the U.S. secretary of state, used the phrase "crimes against
humanity.?" a depressingly common formulation in our own
day, but a highly unusual turn of phrase at the end of the
nineteenth century.
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Copyright © 2002 by Overseas Ministries Study Center. All rights reserved.
October 2002
Within a short time of arriving in the Congo in 1898, both Harris
and her husband began sending home written reports on many
aspects of life there and taking a wide variety of photographs.
Their photographs were ethnographic, botanical, and political
(in the sense of being images that could be used to put political
pressure on various groups, including the British government).
Alice Harris's photographs were already being used in
Regions Beyond, the magazine of the Congo Balolo Mission,
before the Harrises returned to Britain on furlough in 1902. In
1904, however, following Roger Casement's consular report on
the subject, Regions Beyond began to write openly about the
atrocities, and Alice Harris's photographs began to be used more
widely. In the same year Mrs. H. Grattan-Guinness, wife of the
editor of Regions Beyond, published the pamphlet Congo Slavery,
again using many of Harris's photographs."
In 1904, following a private meeting the previous December
with Roger Casement, E. D. Morel formed the Congo Reform
Association. The next year the Harrises toured the United States,
addressing more than 200 meetings in forty-nine cities. In this
period at the beginning of the twentieth century, the use of the
magic lantern for large public gatherings was at its height. While
147
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I
Nsala of Wala with his daughter's hand and foot.
Photograph by Alice Harris, 1904. From Edmund D . Morel, King Leopo ld's Rule in A frica (London:
Heinemann, 1904), following p. 144.
John Harris usually spo ke a t these meetings, Alice Har ris's vis ua l
images mad e the biggest emo tiona l impact. In an age we ll before
television , when photogr aphs we re still ra re in daily newsp ap ers
and w he n world tra vel in th e mod ern se ns e was an oppo rtu nity
ope n only to few, the magic lantern was one of the most popular
mean s of visu al commu nication.
Frequently rep eat ed mod ern images of wa r, famine, and
d estruction , which appear almost nightly on our television
scree ns, hav e perhaps blunted our sense of outrage and shoc k at
inhuman e acts. However, I still rem ember viv id ly th e emo tional
shoc k of enco untering mu tila ted child ren on th e streets of
Free town, Sierra Leon e, during the recent civil wa r there. Imag­
ine, then , the shoc k for audiences 100 yea rs ago of being con­
fronted by Harris's harro wing photogr aphic im ages of mutilat ed
men, wome n, and child ren in the Congo .
O the r mission ar y photographers also d ocumented the re­
su lts of th e viciou s regim e of Leopo ld in th e Congo, but both in
th eir qu alit y and in their di stribution , Harris's photographs had
a grea ter impact than th ose of any othe r mission ar y (or indeed ,
nonmissionar y) of the period. Multiple copi es of her photo­
gra phs we re mad e into magic-lantern slides, acco mpa nied by
explana tory text. 10 The slides found their wa y not only to Britain
but to Europe and N orth Ame rica as we ll. In add ition, her
photographs appear ed in man y books. Indeed , some edi tions of
Mark Tw ain 's King Leopold's Soliloquy used her photograph
"Nsala of Wal a with his dau ghter's hand and foot." The sa me
photo graph appear ed in Morel's book, King Leopold's Rule in
Africa11 and in Mrs. Gra ttan-Guinness's Congo Slavery.
In 1906 th e Harrises began working for Morel' s Con go
Reform Association . She took mo st of the photographs that
Morel used in the publicity for th e asso ciation. In add ition she
help ed her hu sband wri te several of the books that he published,
th ou gh she is never credited as a coau thor . Her one inde pe nde nt
publicat ion (as far as I am aware) was The Camera and Congo
Crime, a pam phlet contai ning twenty-four of her photographs."
Qu ite a few of her ph otographs from this pe riod still exist, either
as original prints or as mag ic-lantern slides. Some are in the
archives of the British and Forei gn Anti-Slave ry an d Aborig ines'
Protection Society at Rhod es H ou se in Oxford; othe rs are at the
headquart ers of Anti-Slavery Int ernat ion al in Brixton, London ."
Momentum for Reform
By th is tim e, pr essure for reform was growing in both the United
States and Britai n. In 1905 Leop old set up his ow n commission of
inquiry that he hoped wo u ld lar gely absolve him and his ad min­
istrati on from blame and vind icat e his ru le in the Co ngo . The
oppos ite happen ed , d espite Leop old 's handpickin g of th e com­
mission . The commissio n's negative re po rt fur the r increase d the
pressure for major reform. In December 1906 th e daily New York
American ran a wee k of articl es on the Co ngo atroc ities, using
H arri s's ph otographs to illu str at e th em. "
Eventua lly Leop old agr eed to hand ove r ad mi nistra tion of
th e Congo to the Belgian govern ment. This tran sition took place
officially in Novembe r 1908. The shift in governa nce was not a
revolu tionary, or eve n a rad ical, solu tion, but it did ensure the
cessation of the most inhuma ne of Leopo ld's policies and a
grea ter degr ee of accountabili ty for the future. The Harrises we re
aware that w ha t had been wo n was one sma ll battle, rather than
th e war. Per ha ps for this reason John Harris in 1910 became
orga nizing secretary of the British and Foreig n Anti-Slavery and
Aborigines' Pro tection Society, for w hic h he continue d to work
until his death in 1940. Thou gh Alice Harris held no official
position with the organization, she was, in effect, a cosec reta ry.
She also continue d wi th wh at tod ay wo u ld be called her docu­
m entar y pho tog ra phy .
148
I N1 FRN ATIO N AL BULLETIN LlF M ISSIO NARY R ESEA RCH
In 1911-12 the Harrises returned to Africa, including the
Congo. During this visit Harris took hundreds more photo­
graphs, most of which have survived." Only a handful of these
later photographs are of what one might call atrocities. Overall,
the Harrises saw "an immense improvement" in the situation in
the Congo, yet they were not naive about ongoing injustices.
Indeed, John Harris wrote a long report on the latest commercial
development, the extraction of palm oil. He criticized the fact that
the rights of indigenous peoples were ignored in the process and
later produced a book, Present Conditions in theCongo, illustrated
with his wife's photographs."
Yet the zenith of the Congo Reform Association's influence
had passed. Leopold had handed over control of the Congo to the
Belgian government in 1908, and just over a year later, he was
dead. While much remained that was wrong with the colonial
administration of the Congo, the emotional moment had passed,
and support for further Congo reform began to wane. In 1913
Morel decided to discontinue the Congo Reform Association.
Alice and John Harris were both on the platform at its final
meeting in London on June 16. In his speech Morel commented,
"We have struck a blow for human justice; that cannot and will
not pass away."I7 That a considerable part of that blow was due
to the photography of Alice Harris cannot be doubted. The
impact of her work was partly due to her skill with a camera, but
it was also partly due to the nature of her subject, namely, the
harrowing and highly symbolic nature of physical dismember­
ment. Cutting off human hands and feet brought forth a particu­
larly strong emotional reaction that has remained, even until
today.
was used to set up a false dichotomy between civilization and
savagery and between Christianity and heathenism. Unfortu­
nately, there is much truth in such criticism. With the exception
of Shepherd, most of the missionaries involved in publicizing the
Congo atrocities could not be called stridently pro-African, cer­
tainly not in the religious or cultural sense of the term. Yet they
had a deep and basic concern for human dignity and were
prepared (to varying degrees) to fight against injustice and
inhumanity. That such injustice was perpetrated largely by their
fellow Europeans" was yet another twist to the story, though
criticism of the colonial policies of a country other than one's own
was not by any means unknown.
What was unusual was the international nature of the cam­
paign against Leopold's rule. The campaign was due to the work
of many people, some of whom have been mentioned in passing.
Several of them, such as Mark Twain and Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, were already figures of international repute; others such
as E. D. Morel and William H. Shepherd became famous as a
result of the campaign. Some, like Alice Harris, remained com­
paratively unknown throughout the struggle. Yet in many ways
she contributed as much as anyone (with the exception of Morel,
and even he remained in her debt). That her textual contribution
was largely subsumed under the name of her husband was
unfortunate. Her photographic contribution was unique and
deeply significant.
In the early years of the twentieth century, Alice Harris
undoubtedly threw light on the Dark Continent. The light was
the exposure (in both senses of that word) of the photographs she
took. The darkness was not the natural condition of the conti­
nent-as so many outsiders of the period might have wanted to
argue-but the evil imported into Africa from Europe through
the greed of men such as Leopold. Almost 100 years after they
were taken, Alice Harris's photographs still stand as a beacon of
light against such injustice.
Critical Exposure
In recent years there has been much criticism of mission photog­
raphy. The case has often been made that it helped to reinforce
European stereotypes of the barbaric and savage other, that it
Notes----------------------------------------­
1. Mark Twain, King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense ofHis Congo Rule, 2d
ed. (Boston: Warren, 1905), pp. 39-40.
2. James Stewart, Dawn in the Dark Continent (Edinburgh: Oliphant,
Henderson, & Ferrier, 1903).
3. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, TheCrimeoftheCongo (London: Hutchinson,
1909).
4. Joseph Conrad, HeartofDarkness (London: 1902);see Jim Zwick, ed.,
"Reforming the Heart of Darkness," <www.boondocksnet.com>.
5. Pagan Kennedy, Black Livingstone: A True Tale of Adventure in the
Nineteenth-Century Congo (New York: Viking, 2002), pp. 177-87.
6. Roger Casement, Correspondence andReportfromHisMajesty'sConsul
at Boma Respecting the Administration of the Independent State of the
Congo (London: Harrison & Sons, 1904-5).
7. Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and
Heroism in Colonial Africa(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998),p. 81.
8. Ibid., pp. 111-12.
9. Mrs. H. Grattan-Guinness, Congo Slavery: A BriefSurvey oftheCongo
Question from the Humanitarian Point of View (London: R.B.M.U.
Publication Dept., 1904).
10. British and Foreign Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society
Archives, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, England. Hereafter
BFA-S & APS Archives.
11. E. D. Morel, KingLeopold's Rulein Africa(London: Heinemann, 1904),
October 2002
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
149
p. 144. In a caption the photograph is wrongly attributed to John
Harris, rather than Alice. On p. 444 an appendix points out that John
Harris was not present when the incident occurred. The photograph
was definitely taken by Alice.
Alice Harris, The Camera and Congo Crime (London: ca. 1909). I am
grateful for this reference to Kevin Grant, whose detailed article
"Christian Critics of Empire: Missionaries, Lantern Lectures, and the
Congo Reform Campaign in Britain," Journal of Imperial and
Commonweal History 29, no. 2 (May 2001): 27-58, covers some of the
same ground as my much shorter article.
Two of Alice Harris's photographs may be found at <http:/ I
www.boondocksnet.com/congo I congo_kodak05.html> and
<http://www.boondocksnet.com/congo/congo_kodak06.html>.
Newspaper Collections (microform), New York Public Library.
BFA-S & APS Archives.
John H. Harris, Present Conditions in the Congo (London: Denison
House, 1911).
Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost, pp. 273-74.
Directly contradicting statements made by supporters of King
Leopold, a number of missionaries in the Congo signed affidavits
stating that the practice of cutting off hands and feet was not a
traditional custom in the areas in which they worked and that it had
been introduced by Europeans.