The Gentle Cartographer of the Congo

In 1913, a young British missionary named Arthur Banks arrived in the Belgian Congo, where King Leopold's brutal rubber trade had left entire villages shattered. Banks carried no weapon, commanded no army, and made no fiery speeches in the colonial courts. Instead, he did something no one expected: he began drawing maps. Walking village to village across the Kasai region, Banks quietly documented every community — their names, their locations, their populations.…