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- [00:01]
William Drimpel
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire a chat community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:20]
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- [00:49]
William Drimpel
Limu Emu and Doug. Here we have the Limu Imu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [01:07]
Michael Stevens
Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [01:10]
William Drimpel
Cut the camera.
- [01:11]
James Holland
They see us.
- [01:11]
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- [01:14]
Anita Anand
Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Very unwritten.
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- [01:19]
Anita Anand
Excludes Massachusetts.
- [01:19]
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- [01:50]
Anita Anand
Hello, Empire podcast listeners. Anita here. Look, this episode is going to be one. Perhaps if you're of a delicate disposition or you've got small children or even slightly bigger children who don't like gory story, you may not want to listen to it with them. Anyway, just a friendly warning on with the show. Hello and welcome to Empire with me.
- [02:22]
William Drimpel
Anita Anand, and me, William to Rimpel. And we have got the most Anita ish story ever in this episode.
- [02:31]
Anita Anand
Yes, and I don't apologise for a second about that. It really is actually this one tickled every nerve ending in my body and not always in a good way. Can I tell you? Because in this third of our series on photographers who change the world, we are looking at a woman. Shock, horror. That's why I'm so excitable. You almost certainly have never heard of her. But this is a woman who took on a European king and she won. And her name was Alice Seeley Harris. And I bet you've never heard of her, have you, Willy?
- [03:02]
William Drimpel
I've never heard of her. No, I know. Funny enough, the photograph she took, as is often the case in the photographers of the series, just like half the pictures that Karsh took, absolutely iconic photographs, but I had no idea who took them. And ditto the horrific pictures which Alice Seeley Harris took.
- [03:18]
Anita Anand
It's just so often the case. And this is the thing that anyone who's a regular listener to this podcast will know. I find it extraordinary, aggravating, irritating, infuriating, that so many extraordinary women in history just fall comprehensively through the cracks.
- [03:35]
William Drimpel
We have never heard you say that before.
- [03:37]
Anita Anand
No, I know.
- [03:38]
William Drimpel
It is literally the first time I've ever heard you say that, Anita.
- [03:41]
Anita Anand
Oh, my God. I really ought to have a tattoo of some sort and see if I do, it'll be falling through the cracks. This is also a story that goes back with the history of cameras. So the first portable Kodak camera is the weapon of choice here. And with it, Alice Seeley Harris goes on to document and bear witness to some of the most inhumane acts that this planet has ever known. Not only did she witness these things, but she also disseminated the imagery. It caused a moral revolt. But despite the fact that this is a woman who changed history at the time, even though it was acknowledged that these, these photographs that Alice took were going to change everything, going to change Europe, she was never even identified in the newspapers by her own name. So a little bit like Marie Curie was Pierre's wife for a long. Even when she won the Nobel Prize, it was sort of, oh, Pierre Curie has won the Nobel Prize. Yeah. She was known, Alice, as Mrs. John Harris. Her husband was a man called John Hobbis Harris and both of them were Baptists. She is somebody who is deeply religious and that is going to be the bedrock of her morality. What does she get for being this incredibly moral and upstanding person? Well, I mean, absolutely nothing. Nothing in return. I mean, she sort of has accolades at the time, but under a different name, but now completely forgot. So we're going to sort that out. So she is born in 1870 in Malmesbury in Wiltshire, which, I mean, if you, if you don't know it, is this rather gorgeous, quaint ancient town in England. And it dates right back to the time of King Athelstan. And it was a modest Baptist upbringing. The family moves from Wiltshire to Somerset to Frome in Somerset. And her father again is a sort of very middle class, lower middle class of anything background, is the manager of a silk mill. And they live very close to the mill. Alice is spending her teenage years there. I mean, she doesn't have to work in the mill because her father is sufficiently well off for her to be able to study. And that's really important. So if you look at early pictures of Alice, she does look like the nerdy girl.
- [05:47]
William Drimpel
Severe plus or severe plus plus even.
- [05:50]
Anita Anand
Yeah, she's serious minded, you know, so she's got this idea. And again, you know, I mentioned her religious foundation is really important to her. So she starts in her 20s. And again, this is, you know, unusual for the time for a woman to think she has a future in the civil service. But she does because service is a big part of her Baptist upbringing. She moves to London, she attends college there. She gets missionary classes in when she's not studying for the civil service. And it's at the missionary classes that she meets her future husband, John Hobbis Harris. William in Baptists were known for proselytizing, weren't they? And it wasn't, it wasn't unusual for a Baptist to want to go and spread the word of the Bible around the world.
- [06:32]
William Drimpel
I don't think it was a unique Baptist thing. I think you find lots of different missionaries at this time. You find the white fathers working alongside them in the, in the Congo at this period. I remember even in my childhood, the white fathers used to come on Sundays once a year and tell tales of missionary activity in darkest Africa.
- [06:49]
Anita Anand
That is the experience of many, many people in England at the time. You know, they would hear the spreading of the light in darkest Africa. I mean, that was one of the things that was prevalent at the time. But Alice had a different view because she had been hearing from previous missionaries that actually things were not as black and white, if I can put it that way, as the stories that most people were digesting, that there were actually disturbing stories about the plight of the natives, that they weren't being treated well. And for seven long years, al and this is why I love her right from the get go, wants to see for herself. She wants to go and she wants to help. And it is known, you know, at the time that an African posting, particularly in the Congo, is one of the most challenging postings for a missionary. It's undeveloped, the outposts are deep. Sometimes in really hostile environments. There's disease, there are mosquitoes. All of that is going on. And yet this woman of the fairer sex, as she would have been deemed at the time, absolutely has this in her head that she can do something. And I can't stress this enough. If you look at a picture of Alice, she doesn't look like the sort. I mean, to me she Looks like a quintessential. The people, I think are among the best people in the world. A librarian.
- [08:05]
William Drimpel
Exactly the word I was looking forward to. She's absolutely the school librarian. Severe hornroom glasses, slightly prim, ordered all those sort of adjectives.
- [08:15]
Anita Anand
Neat.
- [08:16]
William Drimpel
Yeah, neat.
- [08:16]
Anita Anand
Neat as a pin. So for seven years she keeps applying, saying, can I go to Congo? And they say, no, can I go to Congo? Alice, We've said, no, can I get to Congo now? And they keep sort of knocking her back, saying, alice, for goodness sake, you are a flimsy thing. Don't be ridiculous. But finally, after a huge amount, seven years of persistence in 1897, at the.
- [08:35]
William Drimpel
Grand old age of 27 by this.
- [08:37]
Anita Anand
Point, which is old by those standards.
- [08:40]
William Drimpel
Seems less old each year I find unmarried, though.
- [08:43]
Anita Anand
I mean, that's also unusual. She gets this answer that she's longing for. And part of the reason that she does get it is, is because she does finally marry. She marries John Hobbis Harris, this, this missionary that she meets at missionary training school, and they sort of do a quickie marriage just so that she can have partly, you know, the permission to go and do what her heart is telling her she has to do and go to Congo.
- [09:07]
William Drimpel
Why is she at missionary school in the first place if she hasn't got the.
- [09:10]
Anita Anand
She's at missionary school because she wants to be a missionary. She keeps getting knocked back from going to the Congo. So she has to assure them, no, no, no, I am getting married and you can send me after I get married. They get married at a registry office in 1898. So it really is one of those quickie things like, look, we got to get the paperwork in order because I might be able to go if we're married.
- [09:27]
William Drimpel
That would have been quite unusual in 1898. Everyone would have got married in church at that point, wouldn't it?
- [09:32]
Anita Anand
Everything about her is unusual. Willi, I can't stress this enough, but John loves her and they love each other. There is definitely love there because they want to live and they want to work together, they want to be together. But they spend their honeymoon on the ship that takes them on this three month voyage to Congo Free State. It's called the SS Cameron, as you said, you know, the grand old age of 27. She arrives there and this is the.
- [09:56]
William Drimpel
Same sort of time that Conrad five, six episodes ago was landing up here, isn't it?
- [10:01]
Anita Anand
100%. A lot of people are able to travel. The stories of, you know, missionaries in particular are spreading the word that this is an interesting place. But not just that, because remember the person that we talked about quite a lot in the Conrad episode, Leopold ii, King of the Belgians, cousin of Queen Victoria. He is also very, very good at putting out propaganda of how brilliant his free state is and how wonderful the lives of the natives are in his free state. And I apologize for using the word natives, I find it jarring, but that is the nomenclature at the time. So that's what we're going to use. And she is pregnant with her first child after that voyage. So, you know, not only is she sort of this slight librarian type creature, she's pregnant and they don't turn back, they carry on. So she's stationed with John between the years 1898 and 1901 at this place. It's a mission station at a place called Ikau, near the Lilonga River. You may not have heard of it, but it's a tributary of the river Congo, the main sort of water thoroughfare that goes through Congo. And there is this extraordinary photo of her and Willi, just describe it to everybody.
- [11:10]
William Drimpel
It's a lovely photo. She is at the top of a great sort of mountain of people. And she stands out because not only is she at the top, she is the only white person. She is wearing white clothes and she's wearing a white hat. And she's probably the only person wearing clothes at all because everyone else is sort of naked as far as one can see. This is in the middle of a very tropical. I think it's a breadfruit tree. Behind her there must be, what, about 70 tiny, little, very sweet looking kids all in a great big heap.
- [11:38]
Anita Anand
It's one of those photographs that will jar with people because it's that kind of white savior imagery, you know, of the angel rising up. It reinforces that thing that these are the people I've come here to help. And indeed, you know, she does what missionaries do when she first arrives. She teaches Bible stories to the local children. And, you know, she takes them through scripture, she teaches them songs. She's sort of very Maria von Trapp with a guitar and, you know, sort of singing away. But then everything changes.
- [12:03]
William Drimpel
One day, in a rather abrupt and.
- [12:05]
Anita Anand
Horrific manner, in the summer of 1902, there is a knock on her door. And this happens to be at a time when John, her husband, has gone up country, so somewhere deep into, you know, the jungles to preach. So she's alone at the missionary compound, Willy, and there's this commotion outside and this banging on her door, and it just seems really insistent. So she steps out onto the porch and she's greeted by the sight of this man who is sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and is obviously in. In emotional turmoil, but looks physically damaged as well because there are two men with him who have to hold him up by the armpits in front of her, almost collapsing. He's in such a terrible state by her feet. And finally he sort of musters the strength to hand her this package. And it's wrapped in plantain leaves. And this is how she recounts that moment 63 years later. She's talking many years, you know, decades later to an audience in Surrey, of all places, in sort of Middle England. And she says, their eyes were fixed steadily upon me as I unwrapped the parcel. I opened it with greater care than usual because I wasn't sure what I was given. The way they looked at me with such burden etched on each face. And to my horror, out fell two tiny pieces of human anatomy. A tiny child's foot and a tiny hand. I mean, just imagine that, Willy.
- [13:31]
William Drimpel
Terrible, terrible image. That's like a horror film.
- [13:34]
Anita Anand
The man in question then is able to get the strength together to say his name is Nisala. And he comes from a place called Walla. And he has failed to gather his rubber quota for the Belgians that day. And the Belgian appointed overseers had killed and eaten his wife and daughter. And they gave Nisala this gory reminder. Very much like the horse's head in a bed, you know, by the mafia. These are the severed limbs of the people you've loved most in the world. Remember that eaten them.
- [14:09]
William Drimpel
Is that. That's not a misprint or a mistake?
- [14:12]
Anita Anand
It is not a mistake. That's what Nisale says happens. And the overseers and we'll come to them. The capitas are normally of the same nationality. They don't necessarily come from the same region. But they are employed by the Belgians to visit the most horror that they possibly can on the people to make sure that the quota is kept up to date.
- [14:34]
William Drimpel
In all the times I've heard these stories from the Belgian Congo, I've never heard stories of the overseers eating people. Actual cannibalism as well.
- [14:43]
Anita Anand
The horror. The horror. As a great writer once.
- [14:46]
William Drimpel
No wonder Conrad had a nervous breakdown and went home.
- [14:49]
Anita Anand
Nisala doesn't know what else to do. So he takes it to Alice. First of all, he'd gone to the elders of his tribe and they couldn't do anything. Everybody was really frightened of these people. And so he turns to the White woman in the missionary. And Alice in a state of utter shock and revulsion. Just imagine what she's going through. She doesn't know what to do, but she knows one thing in her gut. She has to record this moment. So she gets this Kodak box Brownie that she's taken with her, which is the earliest camera that, you know, normal people can get their hands on.
- [15:21]
William Drimpel
My grandmother had one. I remember the box Brownie in her.
- [15:24]
Anita Anand
House with this very rudimentary piece of kit. And it is really very basic. It's kind of just a cardboard box with a lens. And we may talk about that a bit later, about how this Kodak box Brownie changes everything. But she takes this image, which is startling in its clarity, but also its horror. I mean, just describe it for people listening.
- [15:44]
William Drimpel
It's four figures in a tropical landscape. And there are palms and a lawn. And at the end of the lawn is a road and little boys at the end of the road. At the center of the frame is a sitting figure who has been placed on. Is it the porch?
- [16:05]
Anita Anand
It's a porch. It's the place where he was banging the door down. It is like literally seconds after this interaction takes place.
- [16:12]
William Drimpel
And he is sitting there with his beard, he's almost naked. He's got a tiny waist wrap around his middle. And he's sitting looking very intently at two objects in front of him. And it takes a second to realize what the objects are because you can't focus on them immediately. He's the focus of the picture. But then you notice what it is. And it is a child's tiny foot and an even smaller tiny hand. And he's staring at it. And there's two very grim faced guys to the right frame. And it's a very silent picture. No one is talking. And it's an image of quiet horror.
- [16:56]
Anita Anand
Just as a piece of reportage, it looks very modern. It looks like the kind of news and war reportage that you'd see.
- [17:04]
William Drimpel
Could be 1970s Dun McCullen picture or something. Exactly.
- [17:08]
Anita Anand
Hundred percent. Which is again an extraordinary thing. So that picture is the start of Alice's true life. And true calling that one banging on the door. That one horror will define the rest of her life. Because from that moment on, Alice decides that she is going to gather evidence of these terrible atrocities that are carrying on around her in the name of commerce. Because, you know, she acts in the name of God. She finds it sort of, you know, just so evil and awful. And this is now her vocation. And she decides to do this knowing that she is living in a very dangerous world where armed men can visit any kind of violence on people like Nisala and also anyone who supports them and all she has is her box Brownie Kodak for protection. Join us after the break where we go on with Alice's story.
- [18:03]
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James Holland
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- [18:34]
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- [19:15]
Anita Anand
So good, so good, so good.
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- [19:29]
Anita Anand
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- [19:44]
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- [20:13]
William Drimpel
Welcome back everyone. So I am sitting now looking at a picture of a Kodak box Brownie. This is, as Anita said, the first portable camera in history. And what I have never seen before is the box it comes in and it is a very sort of jaunty box with Victorian writing of the sort of typeface you'd normally see with a Victorian circus or something. It's sort of jaunty and jolly.
- [20:40]
Anita Anand
Or hot chocolate or one of those wholesome things the Victorians were into.
- [20:43]
William Drimpel
Exactly. Born vita, hot chocolate, that sort of thing. And it says, Eastman Kodak Brownie camera. And camera is in a bright yellow typeface. And there is this little brown box which is what she took out to the Congo with her and which recorded these utterly horrific photographs that we're going to hear more about.
- [21:03]
Anita Anand
And it was only introduced four years before Alice took that picture. I mean, it's such a new piece of tech, if you like, but it was such an important piece of tech because it democratized photography. It was, you know, making photography accessible to the masses. You know, before that, you had sort of daguerreotypes or you had these huge glass plates or, you know, things that were not very wieldy and certainly things you couldn't drag into the middle of the Congo. And these little cameras sold for as little as $1. I mean, we'll put it in dollar terms, really.
- [21:31]
William Drimpel
They were that cheap?
- [21:32]
Anita Anand
Very, very, very cheap. Really easy to use. The number one Brownie, which was the first of its kind, was made of cardboard, and all it had was a tiny lens and shutter. And it led to millions of sales over the decades for countless people. It was their first experience of photography. The Brownie was. And it's only four years after its invention that Alice is using it, wielding it this way. And so. So she takes the picture. John arrives back at the mission to find his wife rocking with outrage. I mean, she's in this state of apoplexy, of anger mixed with grief, mixed with horror.
- [22:08]
William Drimpel
We are sort of used to the horrors of the Belgian Congo. You know, I certainly heard about it probably at school and studying Heart of Darkness. I think probably at the time you mentioned that there had been rumors even before she set out that things were not. Not being run as they should have been. But the Victorians, as we saw with Kipling in our Kipling series, really believed, in a way that we don't, that Empire was a good thing. They really believed Empire brought benefits to the colonized peoples. And so you can imagine that not only is she outraged by this, but she's also presumably surprised by it. What on earth is going on?
- [22:45]
Anita Anand
Sort of, Willy. But just remember, that was her motivation to go.
- [22:48]
William Drimpel
Wasn't her motivation to bring the word of God, et CETERA et cetera.
- [22:51]
Anita Anand
But also because missionaries were coming back and telling her, this is not what it seems. They'd seen this stuff. They had people, you know, she's one of many missionaries. This is one moment in time captured because of her photograph. And imagine how many others are hearing things like this. But also, you know, on the other side of that, the reason Victorians believed that, you know, this was a civilizing mission, bringing God and light and education to, you know, the benighted people of the uncivilized world is because Leopold was plunging a fortune into propaganda. There are articles and pictures of happy people and all Leopold that was in his interest to keep his business going. So she's up against all of that. Anyway, John comes back, she tells him about what's happened. She says, john, we've got to do something. And John says, well, actually, what I want to do is go back with Nisala to his home and collect some evidence. And I'll tell you what, we'll get this photo out to people in London because surely, surely if the British government knows what's going on, they might do something on a national level. This is not who we are. We're not doing this. We absolutely have the locusts to condemn another country for behaving in this way. So Alice and John, then, who are so brilliant at not just collecting, because collecting evidence is one thing, but actually getting it out in front of the world's eyes is quite another thing. So Alice writes to the Marquess of Bath, who happens to be acquainted with her father. She tells him, please share this photo. They have this sort of shared religious motivation. And she says to the Marquess of Bath, please just get it in front of the faces of as many influential people as you can. And she also hints in this letter to the Marquis of Bath that she'll get more. So it happens, you know, it's like a miracle of connections. Nisala's picture is duly disseminated through various print media outlets, newspapers, periodicals. And it's just the start, because Alice and John decide that they're going to spend the rest of their time in Congo. And remember, they were there till 1905 documenting atrocities of King Leopold's regime so that people can see what's going on. And I can't believe. You can't overestimate Willy, how dangerous this is, because overseers were always armed. The Harrises, you know, Alice, Seely, Harris and John find themselves shot at. They are regularly threatened with violence. As a woman, you can imagine she's threatened with worse. And the Pair eventually have to travel with bodyguards. And whereas, you know, they don't shoot directly at the two white people, they shoot at the bearers, and yet they carry on. And the reason that it is imperative for the Belgians to stop these images getting out is that their empire is making enormous profits thanks to the invention of a man you've probably heard of, a Scotsman called John Boyd Dunlop. Now tell us about your fellow Scot, John Boyd Dunlop, because he also has changed the world. And his discovery is why King Leopold will not let go of his free state in Congress.
- [25:53]
William Drimpel
So Dunlop, as you will remember, those of you who remember the Dunlop Tyre Company is all about rubber. He discovers rubber tyres. And Dunlop is a classic Victorian in a dark suit and a long, white, carefully combed beard. And he's got a rather sort of quizzical Scots expression. You can see that he's Scots just from his expression. I don't know whether you get the same vibes as me, but it's a very Scottish face.
- [26:18]
Anita Anand
Can you.
- [26:19]
William Drimpel
Scotsy, Scotch, born in Ayrshire, home of the Dimples. And he wanted to train as a vet, but it was his interest in inventing that would completely change his life. And he moves to Dan Patrick in Northern Ireland with his wife and young family, his total hypochondriac as the vets practice took off, making him actually a rather wealthy man in a kind of modest Northern Irish way. He spends more and more time on his real passion, which is tinkering in his man shed.
- [26:48]
Anita Anand
His man cave.
- [26:49]
William Drimpel
His man cave. But this is definitely a shed rather than the cave. And one day in 1888, he was looking at his son's tricycle and decided he might be able to make it less uncomfortable and a lot more fun if he put a little bit of rubber between the wooden wheels and the surface of the road. And so the pneumatic tyre was born. And he has the sense and the pragmatism of a good Scotsman to go ahead and patent his invention.
- [27:19]
Anita Anand
But I mean, the pragmatism only goes so far, Willy, because it proves to be so lucrative for everyone but Dunlop in the end. I mean, weirdly, as the inventor of the pneumatic tyre, just the timing of this invention is really important as well, because it's coming at the same time as the development of road transport. You know, the Victorians were great builders of infrastructure, so huge roads, you know.
- [27:39]
William Drimpel
Are being laid, as celebrated by Kipling in his odes to deep sea Cables and pistons.
- [27:45]
Anita Anand
Yes, go back to our Kipling thing. I Found this so funny. He wrote a poem about cables in the sea.
- [27:50]
William Drimpel
Only poem probably ever written about cables.
- [27:53]
Anita Anand
But the thing is, the production of the car tyres en masse, you know, the Dunlop tyres that you were talking about really only happened after his retirement and he didn't make a huge fortune. He could never have imagined just how his invention would change the world.
- [28:06]
William Drimpel
This is like poor old Tim Berners Lee not making a fortune from the Internet.
- [28:10]
Anita Anand
The thing is, Tim Berners Lee gave it away willingly. I don't know if Dunlop meant this to happen.
- [28:14]
William Drimpel
Well, Dunlop, I have to say, looks very, very happy in 1915 when there's a wonderful picture of him with the fluffiest beard you've ever seen. A proper Father Christmas beard, sort of bunched left and right and caught in the slipstream as he bicycles with his pneumatic tires. And this jacket done up on a cold Scots Day and a Louis hat.
- [28:35]
Anita Anand
This dog leg into. Dunlop is just. We're just telling you this because the world is changing and there is this sudden, like, voracious appetite for rubber. No one can get enough of it. And because rubber comes from Congo, King Leopold has absolutely no intention of letting a mousy little woman's photograph take all of that away from her. And there's one very lucrative organization that exists in Congo. It's a concession company working under Leopold's license. And that's how this whole setup works. Leopold is the top of the pyramid. People buy licenses from him, he takes a cut of what they sell and they make and he gets incredibly rich. And this company, this concession company, is the Abir, the Anglo Belgian India Rubber Company. And it is the Abir which has some of the worst records of coercing workers to achieve, achieve their rubber quotas. So they are not averse to physical punishment, whipping, beating. They take hostages. They come and they say, right, you have not made your quota. We're taking your family and you're not going to see them again. While they have taken these people, there's rape, murder, burning of villages. They are an appalling entity that will use anything in their power and keep raising as the world's appetite for rubber grows. They will do anything to the these poor people who have no choice but to service them.
- [29:54]
William Drimpel
How quickly does the Belgian state realize what a threat she is, that she's.
- [29:59]
Anita Anand
Sending these pictures out almost from the first publication? Because, you know, you suddenly see these shadowy men from the Abir who start surveilling the mission. And both John and Alice, they often turn up with guns to Pay their respects. There is this amazing picture of Alice on her veranda. It's 1904, so it's a year before they leave where the Abir turn up, supposedly for their protection, but just, just because I love Alice in this photo. Look at her. I mean, just describe what's happening here.
- [30:26]
William Drimpel
It's great photograph. So Alice is sitting centre stage again in her sort of white crinolines, very much the kind of imperial mem sub. And she's at the top of the steps, presumably the same steps that we saw in the first photograph, seen from a different angle with the foot and the poor child's hands at the top. And standing flanking Alice in this photograph are four uniformed Belgian. Well, they look like policemen or soldiers, don't they?
- [30:53]
Anita Anand
They're mercenaries working for the Abir. They're their own personal army with very.
- [30:57]
William Drimpel
Fierce looking bayonets at the end of their rifles.
- [31:01]
Anita Anand
It's classic. It's a classic move even in the modern era, you know, where you have sort of these oppressive regimes who will pretty much put you under house arrest or say, you know, they're doing it for your own protection. And what is brilliant about this image is that Alex couldn't give a shit. She's like looking straight into the camera. She's looking grim but she's looking determined.
- [31:20]
William Drimpel
It has to say, we don't have any photographs of Alice so far. Smiling Alice has her librarian grimace on even at the best of times. But she's definitely looking pissed off in this one.
- [31:29]
Anita Anand
It's scary, but she doesn't look afraid at all, which is why I really love this photograph of her. She does not look like this is going to stop her and it doesn't. So the couple travel through remote and hostile regions where there are no medical facilities. Malaria, sleeping sickness are rampant in these areas. You also have to have avoid the wildlife. You know, you're in the middle of the jungle and you've got Leopold's private army, the Force Publique, which is known to kill and torture locals, who is on the hunt for anyone who talks to the Harrises. They know because the Harrises have now got a name because their photographs are out there.
- [32:01]
William Drimpel
They become notorious, have they? Notorious Do Gooders.
- [32:04]
Anita Anand
But they can't touch them. But they will touch anybody and, you know, much worse than touch anybody who talks to them. So the Harrises, though their own personal danger is evident. I mean, if they could bump them off or somebody doesn't follow orders and leave them alone, could die at any point.
- [32:18]
William Drimpel
And is she attacked?
- [32:19]
Anita Anand
I mean, they're shot at and they're narrowly missed. Whether they're warning shots or they just got bloody lucky, I don't know. But there are accounts from John, who will later go and brief parliamentarians about what they've gone through. And there are sort of huge written accounts, particularly from John, about what happens and how dangerous it was. But they go by canoe through uncharted river regions. They don't even necessarily have maps to follow, but they go and find wherever there is a rumor of people being attacked. So although Alice never physically attacked, her life is in danger all the time. And she's a woman and she's white, and so she's kind of untouched. But mission houses are burned in reprisal for their reporting. Translators who work for missionaries are often killed or mutilated at this time. But she still keeps taking pictures. And again, Willi, the pictures get sneaked around everywhere is the title of this photographic essay by Alice Seeley Harris. And just again, just describe, Willi, how little some of the people are in these photographs.
- [33:19]
William Drimpel
So what we've got is a collage of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 pictures. Everyone is wearing a kind of white waist strap, naked from the kind of belly button upwards. And on the white of their cotton wrap is displayed the black stump left where their hands have been cut off. And Alice has gone around photographing these poor mutilated people who failed to meet their quota. And they're all full frame, staring straight at the camera, looking at her with a look of pained horror on their face. While some of the kids are as sort of young as what, seven or eight at the bottom left, they're tiny kids.
- [34:03]
Anita Anand
Tiny children. But also the white sheet that you're talking about, that is Alice. That is a choice made by the photographer to take this so that it shows the horror in its most graphic form. So you've got this sort of background which allows a person, the viewer, to see how little the wrists are, how tiny the people are and what is missing. They particularly are afraid of a man called a.m. van Calaken, who is this white agent of the Congo Free State.
- [34:30]
William Drimpel
Good name for a villain.
- [34:31]
Anita Anand
I tried to do some sort of looking into his past, and it's very. It's almost like he's sort of been deleted from the record. So it's very hard to find out much about him. But they name him again and again and they say it is him. He is the one telling his overseers to kidnap the wives and children of men who fail to deliver his ever rising demands. For rubber. And if the men don't meet their quotas, the women and children on Van Calliken's orders are raped and mutilated. So these capitas, these black soldiers or foremen, have full license to do the worst. And he's not the only one. There are also, you know, sort of Leopold's police, the Force Publique, who are meant to be keeping order, who will arrest men on trumped up charges at any given moment. They put them in shackles, and then these men are slaves. Okay. So Alice also takes pictures of men who are enslaved in this way because she is outraged. Again, you know, there is no person who is free in the Congo Free State. And again, there's a very astonishing picture, Willi, that she takes in 1904. This is another one of those pictures that sort of changes people's minds.
- [35:41]
William Drimpel
Members of a chain gang, and they've literally got chains around their necks. Thick, big, metal, heavy chains going round and round their necks and then trailing.
- [35:52]
Anita Anand
To the next person and manacled hands.
- [35:55]
William Drimpel
These were apparently shackled for not paying taxes. So it was all about money.
- [35:59]
Anita Anand
Again, that's awful. And Alice knows, again, these are sort of calculated choices made by somebody who is trying to document and awaken a moral conscience in her own country. Because 1904 for Britain, even though there's been a history of slavery, is very different.
- [36:13]
William Drimpel
So this is a century after slavery has officially been abolished, at least within the British Empire. And yet here are these unfortunate figures who are manacled, shackled, and chained together and then mutilated. And then there's another photograph of a woman completely naked, but for a very, very small wrap around her middle. And she is smiling at the photograph, and it's colorized, and it would look perfectly normal but for the fact that she has no foot on her right leg.
- [36:45]
Anita Anand
They travel back to England in between coming back to the Congo, and they give testimony. And you know, the kind of testimony that John gives. You were saying about you never heard of cannibalism taking place. It did. And John and Alice witnessed this. And it's all part of that sort of regime of terror.
- [37:02]
William Drimpel
Nanita, you've included. I have on the screen in front of me a piece of evidence which is from the Congo Commission of Inquiry. Now, what is that? Is this something that they have set up or they've caused to have set up?
- [37:14]
Anita Anand
They have indeed. Because once the photos start getting out, then there is this sort of growth in feeling that we've got to do something about it. And, you know, even Though this is not us doing it. We need to document this and put pressure on the Belgians to stop. And so sort of like minded people, some with, you know, parliamentary careers, others with a great deal of money, all with this abiding belief that slavery is belongs in the distance, distant past. And it is unimaginably inhumane that this is still going on. They have this commission to again push the government to do something. So, you know, let's collect evidence, let's document everything, because they're trying to cover everything up. Can I just say a little bit about how this stuff gets out? Because remember, you know, Leopold is in charge. This is Leopold's back garden. It's his personally doesn't belong to Belgium, it belongs to King Leopold, his free state. So they have to smuggle out these glass, delicate glass plates back to Britain so that they can get out and to the commission and then have this wider circulation.
- [38:16]
William Drimpel
Does the Brux Brownie use glass still?
- [38:18]
Anita Anand
They did. It's not film, not yet. It's too early. So these little glass plates that are very, very delicate, they stack them amid blank plates. They put up lots of blank plates or boring plates, you know, these lantern slides. Because a lot of, you know, people are giving lantern slide speeches at this time at the turn of the century, and they're lantern slides for sermons. So they'll have a parable of a picture of something or something edifying, boring, dull, dull, dull, dull, dull. And then hide one of these incriminating pictures and then hide it in sawdust and send it back. So if the box is open, they just look like really innocent things. They're labeled innocuously, you know, Bible slides or landscape series. And that's how they get, you know, their slides out. Eventually it becomes too hard for them to stay. And the Harris eventually leave the Free State and Congo for Britain in 1905. And they again are carrying smuggled photographs hidden among their belongings. And they have this thing of we're gonna split the negatives, these pl between several trunks. So if you do have one seized, others will get through. And John Harris jokes about this later on, he said, you know, we carried home enough glass to start a conservatory. So it was heavy luggage. So John and Alice come back to England and they carry on working with the commission, and it's with a man called Edie Morel of the Congo Reform association to further publicize this. What they do, which is a game changer, is they start giving talks in the USA and Europe. I mean, they travel around everywhere, all illustrated with these Damning photographs. These sort of. It is like, you know, the project, you know, the earliest projector, so you'd have John and Alice talking about what happened, but then the images and the audience is just fainting or gasping with horror as these things will happen. And Alice is a particularly powerful speaker because, you know, the press writes about her breathlessly, about how she has moved an audience to near despair.
- [40:08]
William Drimpel
So they team up with a figure who's controversial in some parts of the world and deemed to be a traitor to the British Empire in Ulster. But this is Roger Case, who is this extraordinary figure. A British civil servant of Irish extraction who cuts his teeth in the Congo doing exactly what these two are doing. Documenting, recording and publicizing the horrors of Leopold's regime in the Congo.
- [40:36]
Anita Anand
You're absolutely right. So, you know, he sort of works for consular services and it allows him to not just travel around in the 1890s and he's sort of almost in Paris, parallel with what the Harrises are doing. But he also, because he has a diplomatic bag, can take back interviews with witnesses, you know, labourers, local chiefs and missionaries like the Harrises, you know, themselves. So he manages to get an enormous amount of written material back. But the written material really does need the photographs. It's the photographs that make a difference. Because this pressure that builds up because of them becomes so unbearable for King leopold that in 1908 he is forced to surrender his personal control of the Congo Free State. So he can't deny it anymore. For two decades, Leopold personally had ruled over the Congo as his personal colony and fiefdom, wringing it of every penny of profit that he could from rubber and ivory by visiting these horrors on human beings. And because of this mass movement and a lot of momentum of this coming from the United States and from Great Britain to say, you know what? This will not stop. Historians estimate that the population decline in the Congo Free State under his personal fiefdom was between 1 million and 15 million people. I mean, how are those numbers possible? With many contemporary sources and modern historians, they sort of converge at around 10 million deaths. But look, John comes back to Britain and he goes into politics. He sort of wins a seat in Hackney in 1923 and he's knighted in the New Year's honours list for 1933 for services to anti slavery and the Aborigines Protection Society. Alice gets sod all. She gets nothing. She's a very passionate lecturer. She carries on the battle. She's actually signed up. I love this. I looked her up and she was at one Time signed up with a speaker's agency and she's on the same books as Winston Churchill and Ernest Shackleton, so she's much in demand.
- [42:38]
William Drimpel
So she's shuttling around the country with her lantern slides giving these horrific lectures.
- [42:42]
Anita Anand
And people want to hear her. One of the most famous things about her is because, oh yes, John gets a piece, but whenever they refer to her as Lady Harry she says, don't call me lady, don't call me Lady. So you know, that is her story right till the end. She dies on 24 November 1970 in Guildford and she has lived to the ripe old age of 100. When she dies.
- [43:06]
William Drimpel
There's a wonderful picture of her in old age still with horn rimmed glasses, looking even more librarianish than ever, but also sort of now stooped.
- [43:14]
Anita Anand
I think she's beautiful. I mean her face is, is etched with everything that she's seen. But you know, she's sort of in that same group with people like Emily Hobhouse who I've sort of mentioned and we might do an episode on her again. That bloody woman, in Kitchener's words, she's.
- [43:26]
William Drimpel
Very much an Anita woman.
- [43:28]
Anita Anand
She's so important that Mark Twain pays tribute to the power of her camera in King Leopold's Soliloquy by Mark Twain, which is a satire, which is supposedly in the voice of King Leopold going, you know, I'm a really lovely guy, you know, I'm a really, I'm a great guy and we're doing great things. And it is sort of a private ey of its time, kind of just taking the rise out of King Leopold and the lies he's telling and how he's dressing up, how wonderful his rule has been. But he has this one image in the book which is King Leopold ducking a box brownie that's being hurled towards his head. And what he writes in this, he says, only the Kodak camera could not be bribed as a witness. Isn't that marvellous?
- [44:08]
William Drimpel
The Box Brownie has sort of anticipated the modern drone by some time. It's sort of floating free, floating in the air.
- [44:17]
Anita Anand
It's about to hit him on the head is what's happening. So look, that is the story of Alice Seeley Harris and a very good.
- [44:24]
William Drimpel
Story it is too. Very grateful for that. Anita, thank you for finding that.
- [44:27]
Anita Anand
Oh no, it's my pleasure. And I saw a very touching. There was an interview with her great granddaughter Rebecca Seeley Harris and she said, you know, that even in the family they talked about John more than they talked about Alice, and it was only when she read Mark Twain's King Leopold's Soliloquy, where it said only the Kodak camera couldn't be bribed as a witness, she started looking into Alice's life and she realized the woman behind the lens was Alice Seeley Harris. Anyway, look, I'm so delighted you were interested in this. And these are exactly the stories that I do the POD for.
- [44:57]
William Drimpel
We have three times now come across the Congo in this podcast. We came across it first with Roger Casement on the Irish series. We then came across it again when we were following Code Conrad's Tale with Maya Jasnov. Now we've got it through this extraordinary woman and her flying camera, and I think we really need to get a proper deep dive into the Belgian Congo. Many people regard it as the most horrific of all the different European colonialisms of the 19th century. So I think we really need to look at that. But we've got a rather happier tale to tell to end the story, which is my great, great aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron, who's one of the few people in my family that you also got a. A bit of a crush on.
- [45:41]
Anita Anand
No, I like her.
- [45:42]
William Drimpel
Julia Margaret Cameron was this sort of bonkers Pre Raphaelite. Her sister Sarah had a literary salon at a place called Little Holland House. We've talked about this in our bonus episodes, but we're gonna go deep dive into Julia Margaret's life. She was a great letter writer and she would sort of land on her literary lions, like Paul Tennyson, who lived next to her in the Isle of Wight. He would disappear into his tower to avoid her. Lock the door, not to shoot Hammer. Alfred. Alfred, you coward. Come down. Anyway, there's lots of these sort of stories coming up in the next episode.
- [46:14]
Anita Anand
Yeah, looking forward to that. That's going to be amazing. And if you don't want to wait, you know, all you have to do is actually join our club, because you get all these miniseries in one go, all at the same time, without having to wait. It's empirepod uk.com empirepod uk.com, you get plenty of other goodies besides, you know, early ticket releases, newsletters, cheaper books, all of that kind of thing. Empirepod uk.com Till the next time we meet, though, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand.
- [46:37]
William Drimpel
And goodbye from me, William Drimpel.
- [46:45]
Professor Hannah Fry
Hello, I'm Professor Hannah Fry.
- [46:47]
Michael Stevens
And I'm Michael Stevens, creator of Vsauce. We thought we would join you for a moment, completely uninvited.
- [46:53]
Professor Hannah Fry
We are not going to stay too long. Unless you want us to, of course.
- [46:56]
Michael Stevens
We're here to tell you about our brand new show. The rest is science.
- [47:00]
Professor Hannah Fry
Every episode is going to start with something that feels interesting, initially familiar, and then we're gonna unpick it and tear it apart until you no longer recognize it at all. You know, our banana flavor doesn't taste like bananas.
- [47:12]
Michael Stevens
Yeah, what is that about?
- [47:13]
Professor Hannah Fry
So it is supposed to taste like an old species of banana that was wiped out in a bananapocalypse, and now you will only find it in botanical collections in the gardens of billionaires.
- [47:26]
Anita Anand
Wow.
- [47:28]
Michael Stevens
Banana candy is actually the ghost of a long extinct banana.
- [47:33]
Professor Hannah Fry
So if you like scratching the surface.
- [47:35]
Michael Stevens
Thinking a little bit deeper or weirder.
- [47:38]
Professor Hannah Fry
Yes, definitely.
- [47:39]
Anita Anand
That too.
- [47:39]
Professor Hannah Fry
You can join Michael and I every Tuesday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.