page_title: Belgian Congo
section_title: Social inequality and racial discrimination
hierarchical_section_title: Belgian Congo / "Civilising mission" / Social inequality and racial discrimination
caption_attribution_description: English: Title	Female missionary in rickshaw, Congo, c. 1920-1930 Description	Black and white lantern slide showing an unnamed European female missionary sitting in a rickshaw or garetta on a road near property of the Congo Balolo Mission. One Congolese man in a suit and pith helmet holds the front end of the rickshaw, whilst another man in a shirt and trousers stands at the rear. Both men are barefoot. The female missionary wears a light dress, stockings and shoes and a large pith helmet. The slide is captioned "J.J.M", which may refer to the J J Murray Conference. This slide comes from a collection generated by missionaries working for the Congo Balolo Mission, a mission begun in 1889 under the supervision of the East London Training Institute for Home and Foreign Missions that developed into the interdenominational evangelical mission Regions Beyond Missionary Union after 1900. Subject (genre)	portraits Subject (lcsh)	Women missionaries Rickshaws Subject (unesco)	Road transport Subject (corporate name)	Congo Balolo Mission Geographic subject	roadways Geographic subject (country)	Congo Geographic subject (continent)	Africa Coverage date	1920/1930 Photographer	Unknown Publisher (of the digital version)	University of Southern California. Libraries Date created	1920/1930 Format (aacr2)	lantern slides 8.2 x 8.2cm Format (aat)	lantern slides photographs Part of collection	International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960 Part of subcollection	Photographs from the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh, U.K., ca.1900-ca.1940s Part of series	Regions Beyond Missionary Union. Congo Lantern Slides (CSCNWW33/OS10) File	CSCNWW33/OS10/67 Rights	Contact the repository for details. Physical access	http://www.cswc.div.ed.ac.uk/collections/ Repository name	Centre for the Study of World Christianity Repository address	The University of Edinburgh School of Divinity, New College, Mound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LX, United Kingdom Repository email	divinity-CSWC@ed.ac.uk Filename	IMP-CSCNWW33-OS10-67.tif Archival file	Volume2/IMP-CSCNWW33-OS10-67.tif
context_page_description: The Belgian Congo was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1964.
  Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of Belgium attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexploited Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold's establishing a colony himself. With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition for a personal colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885. By the turn of the century, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did by creating the Belgian Congo in 1908.
  Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the "colonial trinity" of state, missionary and private-company interests. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into the Congo and that individual regions became specialised.
context_section_description: There was an "implicit apartheid". The colony had curfews for Congolese city-dwellers and similar racial restrictions were commonplace. Though there were no specific laws imposing racial segregation and barring blacks from establishments frequented by whites, de facto segregation operated in most areas. For example, initially, the city centers were reserved to the white population only, while the black population was organized in cités indigènes (indigenous neighbourhoods called 'le belge'). Hospitals, department stores and other facilities were often reserved for either whites or blacks. In the Force Publique, black people could not pass the rank of non-commissioned officer. The black population in the cities could not leave their houses from 9 pm to 4 am. This type of segregation began to disappear gradually only in the 1950s, but even then the Congolese remained or felt treated in many respects as second-rate citizens (for instance in political and legal terms).
  Because of the close interconnection between economic development and the 'civilizing mission', and because in practice state officials, missionaries and the white executives of the private companies always lent each other a helping hand, the image has emerged that the Belgian Congo was governed by a "colonial trinity" of King-Church-Capital, encompassing the colonial state, the Christian missions, and the Société Générale de Belgique.
  The paternalistic ideology underpinning colonial policy was summed up in a catch-phrase used by Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans (1934–46): Dominer pour servir ("Dominate to serve"). The colonial government wanted to convey images of a benevolent and conflict-free administration and of the Belgian Congo as a true model colony. Only in the 1950s did this paternalistic attitude begin to change. In the 1950s the most blatant discriminatory measures directed at the Congolese were gradually withdrawn (among these: corporal punishment by means of the feared chicote—Portuguese word for whip).  From 1953, and even more so after the triumphant visit of King Baudouin to the colony in 1955, Governor-General Léon Pétillon (1952–1958) worked to create a "Belgian-Congolese community", in which blacks and whites were to be treated as equals. Regardless, anti-miscegenation laws remained in place, and between 1959 and 1962 thousands of mixed-race Congolese children were forcibly deported from the Congo by the Belgian government and the Catholic Church and taken to Belgium.
  In 1957 the first municipal elections open to black voters took place in a handful of the largest cities — Léopoldville, Élisabethville and Jadotville.
caption: A female missionary is pulled in a rickshaw by Congolese men, circa 1920-1930
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