Colonial authorities punished Tempels for asserting Africans could think logically

Evidence

In contemporary terminology, one could say that Tempels practiced “methodological conversion” (Cox 1998) and discovered the “polyphony” of his “self” (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka 2010). He expressed their worldview in words and published his book on Bantu Philosophy, arguing that the Bantu had their own logic. It was a breakthrough in philosophy and theology, which until that point had held that the Africans were primitives and could not think logically. Alarmed by this new thought, colonial and missionary authorities sent Tempels back to Belgium, where he stayed from 1946 until 1951. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 76

Categorization

• XREF: This narrative of a thinker punished for granting colonized people full rational capacity mirrors similar exile/discipline patterns described in other postcolonial and mission histories.
• QUESTION: What exactly constituted the ‘alarm’ — was Tempels’ offense political, theological, or both? Worth chasing the archival correspondence.