When I began studying the history of Belgian colonialism two decades ago, I found few monographs about the interconnections among missionary activity, colonial rule, and religious belief in central Africa. There were numerous studies of religion in Congo, or of Belgian colonialism, or of missionary orders, but rare were those that brought these together. Recognizing this lacuna, Vincent Viaene, Bram Cleys, Jan De Maeyer, and a diverse group of scholars held an international conference in 2010 on religion and colonization in Congo at KADOC (Documentatie- en Onderzoekscentrum voor Religie, Cultuur en Samenleving), in Leuven, Belgium. One result is this collection, a selection of the research presented in 2010. The book’s editors wish to rectify the fact that much research on the Belgian Congo inclines toward a narrow focus. In general, such scholarship concentrates on either of the colonial era’s “bookends,” namely the Congo Free State period (1885-1908), or Congolese independence and the Congo crisis (1960-65), while research on religion and colonialism more specifically has tended to center on relations between missionary orders and the colonial state to the detriment of a broader view of religion and society in central Africa. The essays here date back some ten years at this point, and not all of them or their references have been updated. Still, the analyses remain insightful, and the bibliographies included at the end of each chapter will be useful to any student of missionary action, religion, and the colonial Congo.

The book’s contributions vary widely in scope. The opening chapter, by Jean-Luc Vellut, paints the history of Christianity’s arrival to central Africa in broad strokes in an analysis spanning four centuries. Vincent Viaene’s contribution on humanitarianism and internationalism and central Africa notes that Congo has been at the center of international history and humanitarianism at three moments across three centuries: from the 1890s to 1908, around 1960, and since 1998 and the start of the Second Congo War. Other chapters are narrowly focused, for instance Marie Bryce’s on a dispute between missionaries and the colonial state about the École unique des assistants médicaux indigènes in Leopoldville, or Zana Etambala’s essay on Catholic missions and a single albeit major event, the January 1959 riots in Leopoldville.

A few key themes recur in the book like, for instance, contradiction. Christianity arrived to central Africa in the late 1400s, the same time as the advent of the Atlantic slave trade. Then, a second era of Christian proselytization in the late 1800s coincided with the atrocities of colonialism. Likewise, the ‘opening up’ of Africa to the mission civilisatrice brought with it opportunities for missionaries but also threats including Kimbanguism, the Kitawala (Watchtower) movement, and competing Christian denominations. Another theme is missionary failure. In her chapter, Anne-Sophie Gijs demonstrates how, when faced with reports of terrible abuses during the Leopoldian period – including by those among their own – Belgian Jesuits closed ranks and rallied to the defense of the Congo Free State. Bram Cleys explains missionary Émeri Cambier’s establishment of autonomous mission stations, with which he hoped to create an ‘archipelago’ of missionary islands in Congo that would grow to embrace the sea of souls around them. When this failed to materialize, Cambier’s approach was abandoned. Piet Clement’s discussion of Placied Tempels’s intellectual and spiritual development includes Tempels’s eventual conclusion that missionary activity never produced a profound embrace of Christianity among African converts.

Another point that emerges is crucial, if not novel: missionary ventures worked hand in glove with the extension of secular, colonial control. Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo’s essay reveals how late nineteenth-century Portuguese missionary work became fundamental to Portugal’s assertion of its historical rights in Congo. Clement’s chapter demonstrates how Placide Tempels’s book La philosophie bantoue (1945) valorized African thought, though with the goal of improving understanding of Congolese so that Europeans were in a better position from which to convert them. As Bram Cleys shows, by mapping territories in Kasai, ‘missionaries enhanced the Congo Free State’s policy of territorializing this region’ (p. 137). Dominic Pistor’s contribution on shifting official views toward the Kitawala movement in the 1950s reveals how colonial development was used as a means to combat that movement, which threatened not only the colonial order but also missionary activity.

Several contributions underscore what remains a primary challenge for any scholar of Africa’s colonial era: finding more African sources. A small number of chapters include forays into Congolese views, including those written by Congolese authors or those of Congolese descent. Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi provides a micro-history of her own parents and family that contributes to the bigger picture of missionizing and the African-European encounter. Sindani Kiangu writes about the Mulelist rebellion, which he lived through as a young person. Nonetheless, the perennial challenge of recovering authentic Congolese voices leaves other contributors saying less about religion on the ground in colonial or postcolonial Congo and more about missionaries and Belgian or Western mindsets. Cleys’s chapter on the making of a ‘colonial landscape’ in Kasai says little about that region’s landscape (colonial or actual) and more about missionaries’ conceptualizations of themselves. Anne Cornet’s chapter on music and the Pères blancs does achieve its goal of complementing officialdom’s record of missionary activity in the Great Lakes region, but it is essentially about missionaries’ views on music. Neither is suggestive of the back-and-forth of the colonial situation or how Congolese shaped the imperial encounter. Instances such as Placied Tempels’s remark about how his empathy toward ‘his Congolese faithful’ had ‘rejuvenated’ his own Christian faith are exceptions that prove the rule (pp. 253-254).

In sum, the editors have done a fine job. The book is engaging, enjoyable, and a high-quality product, with all chapters well written and capably edited. Students of the colonial encounter, and in particular of missionary action in Congo, will find rich references and numerous suggested avenues for future research.