EARLY BELGIAN COLONIAL EFFORTS - The University of Texas at ...

expand them. There was a strong call from the industrial class in Belgium for colonial
expansion, but it never was agreeable to either the government in general or the
population at large. 270
The issue of religion and conversion as an impetus to imperialism does not seem
to be relevant to Santo Tomas. Both Guatemala and Belgium were staunchly Catholic
countries. The agreement between De Puydt and the Guatemalan government was
specifically predicated on the colonists being Catholic. The issue of the religious
relevance, however, did arise with the attempt by several Belgian Jesuits to enter
Guatemala as part of the Belgian colonial movement in order to sidestep the previous
expulsion of that religious order. 271 The material by Fabri relates to the religious side of
the colony. 272 The presence of the Jesuits added to the impression and fears of the
Carrera and the Guatemalan legislature that the colony was being used to circumvent
the expulsion.
The warping of Darwin’s theory into the racism and the Social Darwinism of the
late nineteenth century had not begun by the time of Santo Tomas. There does not seem
to have been any real sense of racial superiority or manifestation of white superiority in
the colonial aspiration of Leopold or Belgium. This of course overlooks the obvious
issue of why Leopold felt he could buy, borrow, or bludgeon indigenous people in his
need for colonies. The obvious answer is that he simply did not regard non-Europeans
270 This was in stark contrast to the general approval of the Belgian people of Leopold II and the
Congo Free State, at least until the revelations of the eighteen nineties.
271 Walle was head of the colony from October 24, 1843-March 6, 1844.
272 Joseph Fabri author of Les Belges au Guatemala, which concentrated on the Jesuits role in the
colony of Santo Tomas, was a Jesuit himself.
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