Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:27:38.303Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Plymouth Brethren and the Occupation of Katanga, 1886–1907

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Robert I. Rotberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The first white persons to settle permanently in Katanga, a highland plateau region geographically isolated from the low-lying Congo basin, were missionaries collectively styled Plymouth Brethren. They were preceded—along the geographical and commercial routes which linked Katanga to Bié and Benguela and to Mweru and Zanzibar—by David Livingstone, who visited the Upper Congo in 1871, and by Verney Lovett Cameron, who traversed the region three years later. Both British explorers reported that Katanga was a region rich in minerals, and therefore an area into which whites should advance. The Germans Paul Reichard and Richard Böhm, in 1884, and the Portuguese Hermenigildo Capelo and Roberto Ivens, in 1885, confirmed the earlier tales.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 1964 , pp. 285 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Livingstone, David, Last Journals (London, 1874), I, 265; II, 220;Google ScholarCameron, Verney Lovett, Across Africa (New York, 1877), 298, 353, 358, 475.Google Scholar

2 For a general discussion of his reign, see Verbeken, Auguste, Msiri, Roi du Garenganze (Bruxelles, 1956), 23–128.Google Scholar

3 Arnot, born in Glasgow in 1858, was the great-grandson of a minister in the Free Church of Scotland. For his life, see Baker, Ernest, The Life and Explorations of Frederick Stanley Arnot (London, 1925).Google Scholar

4 See Beattie, David J., Brethren (Kilmarnock, 1939);Google ScholarNeatby, William Blair, A History of the Plymouth Brethren (London, 1901).Google Scholar

5 Arnot, letter, dated 7 Jan. 1885, in Echoes of Service (April 1885), 59–61.Google Scholar

6 Arnot, diary entry dated 12 Feb. 1886, in Baker, op. cit. 181.Google Scholar

7 Arnot, diary entry, 17 Feb. 1886, in Ibid. 183.

8 Arnot, letter, 11 Aug. 1886, Echoes (April 1887), 59.Google Scholar

9 Arnot, diary entry, I March 1886, in Baker, op. cit. 183–4.Google Scholar

10 Arnot, letters, I July 1886, 19 Nov. 1886, Echoes (1887), supplements.Google Scholar

11 Arnot, letter, II Aug. 1886, Echoes (April 1887), 59. Later his hut was broken into by thieves.Google Scholar

12 Swan, letter, 24 Nov. 1888, Echoes (1889), supplement.Google Scholar

13 Swan, diary, 6 June 1890–16 Oct. 1890, Echoes (June 1890), 137–42.Google Scholar

14 Swan, letter, 2 Nov. 1888, Echoes (1889), supplement.Google Scholar

15 Rhodes to Thomson, in Thomson, James Baird, Joseph Thomson: African Explorer (London, 1896), 269.Google Scholar

16 See Thomson, Joseph, ‘To Lake Bangweolo and the Unexplored Regions of British Central Africa’, The Geographical Journal, I (1893), 113.Google ScholarCf. Comet, René J., Katanga (Bruxelles, 1946), 63–4;Google ScholarSlade, Ruth, King Leopold's Congo (London, 1962), 127.Google Scholar

17 Swan, diary, 7 Nov. 1890, Echoes (June 1891), 140ff.Google Scholar

18 Ibid.

19 Swan, diary, 17 Nov. 1890, Echoes (Nov. 1895), 265–6.Google Scholar

20 Buell, Raymond Leslie, The Native Problem in Africa (New York, 1928), II, 893.Google Scholar

21 Sharpe to H. H. Johnston, 15 Nov. 1890, in Johnston to Foreign Office, F.O. 84/2154 (1891), Public Record Office. Original italics.Google Scholar See also Crawford, Daniel, Thinking Black (London, 1913), 299–304.Google Scholar

22 Crawford to Henry Groves, 18 May 1892, Echoes (Dec. 1891), 300.Google Scholar

23 Crawford, diary, 19 Dec. 1891, Echoes (Nov. 1892), 259.Google Scholar

24 Quoted in Cornet, op. cit. 196.Google Scholar

25 Crawford, diary, 20 Dec. 1892, Echoes (Nov. 1892), 259. Crawford's account was derived from Lt. Legat's information; he in turn got it second-hand.Google Scholar

26 Stairs to Arnot, 29 Dec. 1891, Echoes (July 1892), 161. See also, Crawford, Thinking Black, p. 305;Google ScholarVerbeken, op. cit. 229–42;Google ScholarMoloney, J. A., With Captain Stairs to Katanga (London, 1893), 183–7;Google ScholarHole, Hugh Marshall, The Making of Rhodesia (London, 1926), 238–54;Google ScholarRavenstein, Ernst Georg, ‘Recent Explorations in the South-Eastern Congo Basin’, The Geographical Journal, I (1893), 226.Google Scholar

27 Crawford to Arnot, 13 Nov. 1893, Echoes (July 1893), 256.Google Scholar

28 Crawford, letter, 25 June 1892, Echoes (March 1893), 55–8.Google Scholar

29 Crawford, letter, 26 July 1892, Echoes (March 1893), 71.Google Scholar

30 Crawford, letter, 20 Jan. 1893, Echoes (Nov. 1893), 20–1.Google Scholar

31 Crawford, Thinking Black, 324–5.Google Scholar See also Rotberg, R. I., ‘Missionaries as Chiefs and Entrepreneurs: Northern Rhodesia 1882–1924’, Boston University Papers in African History, forthcoming.Google Scholar

32 Crawford, letter, Echoes (Feb. 1894), 38.Google Scholar

33 Campbell, diary, 11 Nov. 1894, Echoes (Aug. 1895), 205. Cf. Baker, op. cit. 255.Google Scholar

34 See Rotberg, R. I., ‘The Occupation of Trans-Zambezia: the Missionary Factory’, Northern Rhodesia Journal, forthcoming.Google Scholar

35 For a discussion of the role of the Brethren in Central African education, see Rotberg, R. I., ‘The Emergence of Northern Rhodesia: The Missionary Contribution’, St Anthony's Papers, XIV (1963), 101–24.Google Scholar

36 Cobbe, letter, Echoes (May 1896), 136.Google Scholar

37 Lammond, letter, 17 Jan. 1904. (May 1904), 176.Google Scholar

38 Gammon, letter, 1 Oct. 1896, Echoes (March 1897), 90–1.Google Scholar

39 Crawford, diary, 27 April 1899, Echoes (Sept 1899), 269.Google Scholar

40 Campbell to Arnot, Echoes (April 1897), 108–9.Google Scholar

41 Crawford, Grace, letter, 22 Oct. 1904, Echoes (Feb. 1905), 75.Google Scholar