Plymouth Brethren and the Occupation of Katanga, 1886–1907

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.