Latest / The History of Belgium: A Small Country with a Giant Colonial Legacy — Fexingo History
The 1922 Boma Fire and the Loss of Congo Free State Archives
In 1922, a devastating fire swept through Boma, the colonial capital of the Belgian Congo, destroying thousands of official records from the Congo Free State era. This episode explores what was lost: correspondence from King Leopold II, labor records from the rubber and ivory trades, and early missionary accounts. Lucas and Luna discuss the circumstances of the fire, the subsequent efforts to reconstruct the archives through oral histories and scattered copies in Brussels, and what this loss means for our understanding of colonial atrocities. They examine the role of Belgian colonial…
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