Belgian colonials produced much rhetoric on the subject of their ‘civilising mission’ in Africa and they often rationalised, even justified, their presence in the Congo by referring to their duty to instill and nurture in Africans the European, bourgeois values of education, hard work, moral duty, selflessness, courage and patriotism. These values were not only to be taught in the abstract in schools but were to be acquired by Africans in the process of practical works. Congolese would become civilised by labouring for Europeans. But it was often to prove difficult to obtain African labour, the supply of which remained a major issue during the entire colonial experience. This was an enormous problem as the mise en valeur, or economic exploitation, of the Congo in the early decades of its existence depended almost entirely upon obtaining sufficient numbers of African labourers. The earliest instructions to state agents had stressed the significance of labour as the pivot of the Belgian ‘civilising mission’.

As we have seen, the conquest of the northern Belgian Congo was protracted and costly for African societies, but military conquest was only the beginning of many decades of real stress for many people. Administrative policies strained societies in ways which for some populations culminated in famine, disease and death. State demands for labour and tax were particularly onerous and began almost immediately upon establishment of each state post. The relationship between labour recruitment and deployment and the overall upheaval experienced by northern Congolese, especially before 1920, is crucial to an understanding of outbreaks of sleeping sickness.