Digicoljust: Colonial Violence, Subaltern Agency and Shared Archival Heritage
DIGICOLJUST is a two-year pilot-project that has federated the scientific expertise of the State Archives and of the ULB and VUB, their respective skills and responsibilities as centres of heritage management, knowledge production and training of history teachers, around a central yet contentious piece of the Belgian federal heritage. Dozens of military courts (conseils de guerre) were created during the conquest and "pacification" of the Congo in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Military courts were gradually – mainly between 1889 and 1921 – established permanently throughout the Congo. Some of them were maintained until independence in 1960. More than 5,000 case files produced by these jurisdictions have been preserved. These archives bear witness to exceptional historical episodes – the conquest, periods of rebellion and insurgency, the two World Wars –as well as to everyday life of European and African soldiers and officers of the Force Publique.
Pursuing the uncovering of a long-considered lost collection of more than 5,400 courts records encompassing 70 years of testimonies of colonial military crimes, DIGICOLJUST-2 will allow for the development of state-of-the-art solutions designed in collaboration with Congolese archivists for further sharing this heritage, and for the production of innovative historical research. It will offer new insights into the deployment and escalation of armed violence in colonial Central Africa (i.e. the “content” of military violence), as well as into the complex relationship of Belgian colonial (military) authorities to impunity and soldierly misconduct (i.e. the “discontent” with this violence embodied in the judicial process).