page_title: Richard Mohun
section_title: United States agent in the Congo
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Mohun / United States agent in the Congo
caption_attribution_description: English: The Massacre of the Manyuema Women at Nyangwe (original caption). From the Journals of David Livingstone. Three men of Dugumbé ben Habib were shooting at the women at the market of Nyangwe. July 15th, 1871
context_page_description: Richard Dorsey Loraine Mohun was an American explorer, diplomat, mineral prospector and mercenary. Mohun worked for the United States government as a commercial agent in Angola and the Congo Free State. During his time as commercial agent, he volunteered to command a unit of Belgian artillery in a campaign to force Arab slavers from the colony.
  Mohun remained in the service of the US government during this time and was subsequently posted as consul to Zanzibar. In this capacity, he was called upon to act as an intermediary between the combatants in the Anglo-Zanzibar War. Following the conclusion of his three-year posting, Mohun returned to the Congo to prospect for minerals, and later worked with the Belgian authorities.
  His most ambitious undertaking was a three-year expedition, beginning in 1898, that laid a telegraph line from Lake Tanganyika to Stanley Falls. He then spent some time prospecting in South Africa before returning to the Congo to reform the Abir Congo Company on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium.
context_section_description: The well-connected Anna Hanson Dorsey was close friends with the mother of the American Secretary of State James Blaine and Blaine and Dorsey shared ties with Notre Dame University.  Dorsey was able to use this influence to arrange the appointment of Mohun as US commercial agent to the Congo Free State on 22 January 1892, filling a vacancy caused by the death-in-post of US Navy Lieutenant Emory Taunt the previous year.  The US had maintained an agent in the Congo ever since it had been formally recognised and the commercial agent also acted as the nation's diplomatic representative to the Free State.  The post came with a $5,000 annual budget and a remit to investigate the commercial potential of Congo and to promote trade between the two countries, which previously had been almost non-existent.  Mohun was appointed ahead of the missionary Samuel Norvell Lapsley who had been championed by a state senator from Alabama.
  Mohun left America for Genoa, Italy with Louis and their sister, Laura.  The three travelled in Europe for 2–3 months before Mohun reported to Brussels to meet with King Leopold II who, in spite of his callous reputation, impressed him with his apparent ambition to bring peace and western civilization to the Congo. Mohun then journeyed to the Congo with Louis, who was to act as his sub-agent.  The US commercial post in the Free State was then at Boma near the Atlantic coast, but Mohun also operated from Léopoldville, further inland.  In July 1892 he assisted US citizen Warren C. Unckless in establishing a rubber factory on the Sankuru River near Lusambo for the Société anonyme belge pour le commerce du Haut-Congo.  Unckless, a plantation manager in Costa Rica, had imported experienced rubber cutters from South America to begin the enterprise but came under attack from tribesmen and a Belgian force had to be dispatched to provide security.  Mohun spent much of his time in exploration of the country's interior, visiting several areas where no white man had ever ventured and making a survey of the quality of the agricultural land and the crops grown by the native population.
  Mohun frequently came into conflict with the native tribesmen.  When his mail bag and personal papers were stolen and a local chief refused to return them he proceeded to wage war on the chief accompanied by four gunmen and a steamboat.  Mohun attacked and burnt at least ten villages before he captured the chief's son whom he threatened to hang.  In return for his son's life the chief returned the mail bag, alongside a second that Mohun had not noticed was missing.  Another time, seeking to view the native method of making cloth, he visited a remote town accompanied by only six followers covertly armed with revolvers.  The party came under attack by spears and poisoned arrows.  Having fought off their assailants Mohun captured the town and "burned it to the ground to teach them a lesson".  Mohun was always conscious of his public image and wrote a diary with a view to later publication.  Mohun's diary contains little in the way of self-criticism and he reflects upon his responsibility for this incident by stating that he was "satisfied in my own conscience that I had rid the country of a brute and unnecessary member of society."  On another occasion he witnessed the funeral of a local chief who had four of his wives and 10 slaves buried alive with him.  Mohun was unable to intervene, in spite of his horror at the situation, as he had only a small escort and was heavily outnumbered.
  Mohun, who came under attack five or six times within six months, blamed much of the violence on Arab slavers who Mohun claimed had directed the killing of all of the white men in the east of the country and allowed their bodies to be eaten by cannibals.  The slavers, who originated from the East coast of Africa, were in conflict with the heavily-outnumbered Belgian authorities in the Congo Arab War.  Francis, Baron Dhanis, vice-governor general to the Free State, had been leading an expedition against slavers - who were led by Sefu, the son of Tippu Tip - since
caption: An Arab slaver attack on a Congolese village
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