Congo Free State - What Could Archives Tell Us? : New Light and Research Perspective

This multi-authored volume explores the significant importance and key information extracted from recently opened, or rediscovered, archival holdings as part of a new, in-depth, document-based field of study. In doing so, and in an age when information, facts and data matter more than ever, this volume will be an asset to readers who need an accurate and lesser-known approach to the Congo Free State, as well as to those who want to understand the wealth of information that remains to be discovered in some of Belgium’s archival centres.

Through the remains of court cases, company archives and private archives, renowned historians and archivists from universities and scientific institutions in Belgium, the Democratic Republic of Congo, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America have revisited in this book lesser-known or long-lost archives that are crucial for a deeper understanding of the 30 years of the Congo Free State that marked Belgium’s entry into the colonial era.

In a micro-historical approach, they brilliantly demonstrate what the archives can still offer us to perfect our knowledge and refine our opinion in the long term. In particular, they highlight the fact that this history is part of a global and local history of Central Africa.

Patricia Van Schuylenbergh heads the Unit History and Politics at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) and is scientific curator of the colonial archives held at the institution. She recently co-edited with the Belgium State Archives, Belgique, Congo, Rwanda et Burundi: Guide des sources de l’histoire de la colonisation (19e-20e siècle) (2021).

Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi is the Henry M. Stanley Archives and Collections’ curator at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA). Her last book Finding Livingstone, a History in Documents from the Stanley Archives, is co-published with J. L. Newman (2021).