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Paper short abstract:

This paper explicits the strategies used by the Belgian colonial administration to blur personal and collective history of mixed European-African descents in archives. Additionnaly, it raises epistemic, ethical, and legal issues raised by the accessibility of and digitization of such archives.

Paper long abstract:

In 2019, the Belgian Federal Government endorsed the research project ‘Résolution-Métis’ to shed light on the segregation and forced separations experienced by people of mixed European-African descent, hereafter métis, born during the Belgian colonisation in Congo and ‘Ruanda-Urundi’ between 1885 and 1962. Supported by various associations, researchers, and parliamentary deputies, this endorsement resulted from a long struggle primarily led by the métis and their relatives, who claimed their right to reconstruct their personal and collective history that colonial authorities deliberately intended to blur for decades.

Throughout the colonisation, colonial or religious authorities used a series of strategies to manage the life of métis, producing archives that legitimized their actions. First, the colonial administration carried out invasive paternity inquiries. While they sought to identify European fathers, Belgian authorities also used the inquiries to establish mothers’ reputation and judge their ability to care for a child. Secondly, colonial and religious authorities sometimes falsified the identity of métis who were not recognized by their father, further erasing their filiation. Thirdly, especially at the end of colonisation, they set up protocols to send métis children and teenagers to Europe. For that, they sought to obtain the mothers’ administrative consent using different means of pressure, particularly financial ones. Based on cases of métis from Ruanda-Urundi, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to explicit the strategies used by the colonial administration (invasiveness, falsification, pressure) and their transcription in archives. Second, it opens questions about epistemic, ethical, and legal issues raised by the accessibility of and digitization of such archives, not only for scientific purposes but also for the métis themselves. Indeed, more than 350 métis and their descendants have come to the archive since the end of 2019 to retrace their personal and family histories.