page_title: Alice Seeley Harris
section_title: Campaigner
hierarchical_section_title: Alice Seeley Harris / Career / Campaigner
caption_attribution_description: English: Female atrocity victim, Congo, ca. 1900-1915. At the Congo Balolo Mission, in colonial Congo Free State, (present day Democratic Republic of the Congo). Tinted lantern slide titled "The Congo Atrocities" showing a young woman. The woman wears a short waist wrap and holds a long wooden cane, since one of her feet has been amputated.&#160;::*The woman was probably a worker on a Congolese rubber plantation, a victim of the "Congo Atrocities", punishment, murders and mutilations (including amputation) that took place on colonial rubber plantations in the Congo Free State, a territory privately owned by Belgian King Leopold II, who expolited it for its plant and mineral resources. Workers on rubber plantations were paid with worthless goods, and it this imbalance of trade that shipping clerk Edmund Morel reported in his columns for The West African Mail, noticing that weapons were going into the country to control the rubber workers. An investigation took place in the British Parliament, but missionaries felt that they could do nothing in the face of veiled threats by King Leopold II, on whose territory they were preaching. In 1895, Dr Harry Guinness heard first hand witness accounts of amputations, and became involved in the cause to end the brutality on the plantations, helping to form the Congo Reform Association in 1904. International intervention forced Leopold II to abdicate in the same year, and although reforms began under his successor, Albert, change in the rubber plantations would not take effect for some time. This slide was part of a set by Congo Balolo Mission missionary and photographer Alice Seely Harris, who with her husband John Harris used these slides in magic lantern shows across the country to bring the injustices against Congolese workers to public attention. 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. Photographer: Unknown Subject (personal name): Guinness, H. Grattan (Henry Grattan), 1861-1915; Léopold II, King of the Belgians, 1835-1909 Filename: IMP-CSCNWW33-OS10-22.tif Coverage date: 1900/1915 Subject (unesco): Genocide; Women 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 Subject (corporate name): Congo Balolo Mission Repository name: Centre for the Study of World Christianity Archival file: Volume2/IMP-CSCNWW33-OS10-22.tif Repository address: The University of Edinburgh School of Divinity, New College, Mound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LX, United Kingdom Geographic subject (country): Congo Format (aacr2): lantern slides 8.2 x 8.2cm Geographic subject (continent): Africa Rights: Contact the repository for details. Part of series: Regions Beyond Missionary Union. Congo Lantern Slides (CSCNWW33/OS10) Repository email: divinity-CSWC@ed.ac.uk Date created: 1900/1915 Publisher (of the digital version): University of Southern California. Libraries Subject (aat genre): portraits Format (aat): lantern slides; photographs Access conditions: http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/divinity/research/centres/world-christianity/collections-resources Geographic subject: agricultural sites File: CSCNWW33/OS10/22 Subject (lcsh): Crimes against humanity; Atrocities; Rubber plantations; Women--Africa
context_page_description: Alice Seeley Harris was an English missionary and an early documentary photographer. Her photography helped to expose the human rights abuses in the Congo Free State under the regime of Leopold II, King of the Belgians.
context_section_description: Alice was stationed with her husband John from 1898 to 1901 at the Mission Station at Ikau, near the Lulonga River, which is a tributary of the River Congo in the Balolo Tribal region.  Later, from 1901 to 1905, they were stationed at the Mission Station at Baringa,  a village in Tshuapa District, Befale Territory, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  It stands on the banks of the Maringa River, approximately 100 km upriver from Basankusu.
  During her time in the Congo, Alice taught English to the local children, but her most important contribution was to photograph the injuries that were sustained by the Congolese natives at the hands of the agents and soldiers of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold was partly exploiting the local population so fiercely to profit from increased rubber demand after the invention of the pneumatic or inflatable tyre by John Boyd Dunlop in Belfast in 1887. Methods of coercion included whipping, hostage-taking, rape, murder and burning of gardens and villages.
  The most famous and shocking atrocity, whose aftermath Harris captured in her photography, was the severing of hands. In 1904, two men arrived at their mission from a village attacked by 'sentries' of the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company (ABIR) after failing to provide sufficient rubber.  One of the men, Nsala, was holding a small bundle of leaves which when opened revealed the severed hand and foot of a child. Sentries had killed and mutilated Nsala's wife and daughter. Appalled, Alice persuaded Nsala to pose with his child's remains on the veranda of her home for a picture.
  Initially, Alice's photographs were used in Regions Beyond, the magazine of the Congo Balolo Mission. In 1902, the Harrises returned to Britain temporarily. In 1904, Alice's photographs reached wider distribution including Congo Slavery, a pamphlet prepared by Mrs. H. Grattan-Guinness, wife of the editor of Regions Beyond, and in King Leopold's rule in Africa by E. D. Morel. The same year saw the founding of the Congo Reform Association by Morel.
  In 1906 Alice and her husband began working for Morel's Congo Reform Association. In early 1906, Alice and her husband toured the United States. John wrote that they had presented her images at 200 meetings in 49 cities via magic lantern screenings. In December 1906, the daily paper New York American used Harris's photographs to illustrate articles on atrocities in the Congo for an entire week.
  In 1908, Alice and John became joint organizing secretaries of the Congo Reform Association and, in April 1910, they became joint organizing secretaries of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society. Alice soon relinquished her official position, but assisted John at the Society until his death in 1940. She continued her active speaking career and was listed with Christy's Lecture Service alongside luminaries such as Winston Churchill and Ernest Shackleton.
  In November 1908, Leopold II ceded administration of the Congo Free State to the Belgian government, thus creating the Belgian Congo. The Harrises returned to the Congo from 1911–12, following the handover of the Congo to Belgium. They noted improved conditions in the treatment of natives and later produced a book, Present Conditions in the Congo, illustrated with Alice's photographs. Soon thereafter, hundreds of Alice's African documentary photographs were displayed at an exhibition at the Colonial Institution.
  In 1933, she became Lady Alice when her husband was knighted, but was known for saying, "don't call me Lady!"  Some commentators think that Alice should have received an honour for her services, in her own right, having been one of the first people to use photography in a human rights campaign.
  In 1970, Alice reached 100 years old and was interviewed by BBC Radio 4 on a programme called Women of Our Time. She was the first centenarian to be a member of the Frome Society for Local Study, which has placed a plaque near where she lived in Frome.
caption: Tinted lantern slide titled "The Congo Atrocities" showing a mutilated young woman (part of a set by Alice Seely Harris, who with her husband used these slides in magic lantern shows across the country to bring the injustices against Congolese workers to public attention)
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