 Because of the close interconnection between economic development and the 'civilizing mission', and because in practice state officials, missionaries and the white executives of the private companies always lent each other a helping hand, the image has emerged that the Belgian Congo was governed by a "colonial trinity" of King-Church-Capital, encompassing the colonial state, the Christian missions, and the Société Générale de Belgique.The paternalistic ideology underpinning colonial policy was summed up in a catch-phrase used by Governor-General Pierre Ryckmans (1934–46)