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
Transcript
- Lucas: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you know we've spent a lot of time in the Belgian Congo — the rubber atrocities, the forced labor, the military campaigns. But today I want to talk about something a bit different: what happens when the primary sources for that history literally go up in smoke. Luna: You mean a fire? In the archives? Lucas: Exactly. In December 1922, a huge fire swept through Boma, the colonial capital of the Belgian Congo, and destroyed the vast majority of official records from the Congo Free State era — the personal correspondence of King Leopold II, labor records from the rubber and ivory trades, even early missionary accounts. Estimates suggest something like eighty to ninety percent of the pre-1908 archives were lost. Lucas: And fires in archives — they happen, right? Accidents, faulty wiring, whatever. But this particular fire hit at a time when the Belgian government was already trying to distance itself from the Leopoldian legacy. So the question that's always hung over this event is: was it really an accident? Luna: Wait — you're saying someone might have set it on purpose? Lucas: There's no definitive proof, but it's a persistent theory. What we do know is that the fire started late at night in the main administrative building, which housed the archives. The building was made of brick and stone, so it wasn't particularly flammable. And the fire brigade arrived quickly, but they couldn't contain it. By morning, the records were ash. Lucas: And here's the thing: very soon after the fire, the colonial administration in Brussels ordered that all remaining records in the Congo be shipped to Belgium for 'safekeeping.' So what wasn't burned was removed from the colony entirely. Historians have been trying to piece together what was lost ever since. Luna: So what specifically was in those archives? Give me an example of something we'll never know because of that fire. Lucas: One of the biggest losses was the complete set of labor contracts and quotas imposed on villages under the rubber regime. We know from scattered surviving documents — like the reports of the Commission of Inquiry in 1904-1905 — that the system was brutal. But the full picture of how many people were forced to work, how much rubber was collected, how many were killed or mutilated for falling short — those detailed records are gone. Lucas: Also lost were the personal papers of key officials like Jules Renkin, who served as colonial minister and later prime minister of Belgium. Renkin was deeply involved in the transition from the Congo Free State to the Belgian Congo in 1908. His correspondence could have revealed a lot about what the government knew and when they knew it. Lucas: And speaking of what we know and don't know — we should mention that this is a listener-supported show. We deliberately don't run ads on these conversations. If you want to support that choice, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It helps us keep digging into these stories. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to keep the history ad-free and accessible. So what about the missionaries? You said their accounts were also lost? Lucas: Right. Catholic and Protestant missionaries were some of the earliest chroniclers of life in the Congo. They wrote reports, letters, and diaries that often documented abuses by the colonial administration. The Boma archives held a lot of that material, especially from the early 1890s through the 1900s. Losing those firsthand accounts is a huge blow to understanding daily life under Leopold's rule. Luna: But some records survived, right? I mean, we have the Casement Report, the Morel writings, the missionary testimonies that were published. Lucas: We do, and those are invaluable. Roger Casement's 1904 report, for example, was based on interviews he conducted in the Congo, and copies of that survived because they were kept in London. Similarly, E.D. Morel's Congo Reform Association archives are preserved in the UK. But the official Belgian colonial records — the internal memos, the labor quotas, the Force Publique deployment orders, the chicotte punishment logs — those were mostly in Boma. Lucas: There's also a figure named Albert de Bassompierre, who served as a magistrate in the Congo during the early 1900s. He actually tried to prosecute some colonial officials for abuses. His files would have been in Boma. Those cases would tell us a lot about how the system operated and who was held accountable — or not. Luna: So after the fire, how did historians reconstruct what they could? Lucas: They turned to three main sources. First, the records that had already been shipped to Belgium before 1922 — some of those survived, though they're often incomplete. Second, oral histories from Congolese communities. For example, the Luba and Kongo elders passed down stories about the early colonial period, and those have been recorded by researchers. And third, the archives of other colonial powers — the British, the French, the Germans — who had their own interests in the region and kept documents that referenced Belgian activities. Luna: It's like a puzzle where most of the pieces are missing, and you have to look at the picture on the box from someone else's angle. Lucas: Exactly. And in recent years, there's been a push to digitize whatever surviving documents exist, both in Belgium and in Congo. The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren has a major digitization project. But there's still a lot we don't know. For instance, we know that the Force Publique carried out punitive expeditions in the early 1900s, but the exact orders and casualty figures from those raids — gone. Lucas: Another casualty of the fire was the correspondence between Leopold II and his top administrators in the Congo, like Governor General Théophile Wahis. That correspondence would have shown how directly Leopold was involved in the day-to-day management of the colony, especially the brutal labor policies. Some of that correspondence survives in other collections, but the full exchange is lost. Luna: So the fire effectively erased a lot of the evidence that could have been used to prosecute or even just document the crimes of the Congo Free State. That's convenient for the people who wanted to bury the past. Lucas: It is. And that's why the arson theory has legs. The Belgian government at the time was under international pressure — the Congo Reform Association had been campaigning for years. In 1908, Belgium annexed the Congo Free State partly to clean up its image. But by 1922, the memory of the atrocities was still fresh, and there were calls for reparations and accountability. A fire that destroys the records makes it a lot harder to prove anything. Lucas: There's also a more mundane possibility: the electrical wiring in Boma was notoriously bad. The city had only gotten electricity a few years earlier, and fires were common. So it could have been an accident. But the timing — just as the colonial government was centralizing its archives and preparing to ship them to Brussels — seems suspicious. Luna: What about the survivors? I mean, people who worked in the archives, did they leave any accounts of the fire? Lucas: There are a few. One Belgian clerk named Georges van der Smissen wrote a brief memoir about the fire. He described being woken by shouts, seeing the flames from his house, and rushing to the building to try to save documents. He managed to grab a few boxes before the roof collapsed. But his account is just a few pages, and it doesn't hint at any conspiracy. Still, it's one of the few firsthand descriptions we have. Lucas: Another source is the official report of the colonial administration, which concluded that the fire was accidental, caused by a faulty oil lamp in a storage room. But that report was written by the very people who stood to benefit from the destruction. So historians take it with a grain of salt. Luna: It's like the archives themselves became a battleground. Not just for what they contained, but for the power of memory. Lucas: Absolutely. And that battle continues today. In 2019, the Belgian government announced a major project to digitize and open up the colonial archives that still exist. But many Congolese historians argue that the loss of the Boma archives means the full story can never be told. They call for more emphasis on oral traditions and on the archives of other nations. Lucas: There's also the question of restitution. Some of the documents that survived in Belgium are now being requested by the Democratic Republic of Congo. The fire in Boma in 1922 is a reminder of how fragile historical records are, and how important it is to preserve them — but also to be honest about what's missing. Luna: It really makes you think about how history is written. What gets preserved, what gets destroyed, and who decides. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the thread we'll follow next time, when we look at the role of Congolese interpreters and clerks in those early colonial offices — how they shaped the record, sometimes in ways the Belgians never intended.