Research project IM/RT/23/CoSo (Research action IM)
The Colonial Sources (CoSo) project aims to develop a digital platform as a gateway to archives and knowledge about the shared Belgian, Burundian, Congolese and Rwandan colonial past. The CoSo portal will, for the first time, bring together existing but still fragmented collections and information on the Belgian colonial period. It will also offer educational tools based on often asked questions about Belgian colonialism. The platform targets both researchers and a broad public.
CoSo capitalises on the momentum created by several factors such as the contemporary societal debates on (de)colonisation and the restitution of colonial collections; the publication of the source guide Guide des sources de l'histoire de la colonisation in 2021; the recommendations of the Belgian Special Parliamentary Commission "Colonial Past" from 2022 and the transfer of the ‘Africa Archives’ from the FPS Foreign Affairs to the State Archives started in 2016.
In essence, the CoSo project has two major short-term objectives:
Develop an integrated search environment centralising access to archival sources, collections and contextual information on the colonial history of Belgium, Burundi, the DR Congo and Rwanda.
Via this portal, the visitor will be able to search for collections and sources relating to the colonial process, both via a search interface and via a map. If available, the user will also be able to immediately consult digitised sources, existing archival access tools (inventories or source guides) or datasets. In order to contextualise these sources, visitors will also be able to search for contextual information, in particular about ‘people and institutions’ and ‘places’. Throughout the entire project, special attention will be given to colonial language. Using semi-automatic detection methods, problematic terms and descriptions of collections will be detected and dealt with.
Provide an educational toolbox that highlights Belgium's colonisation of Burundi, Congo and Rwanda through a series of FAQs.
This toolbox specifically targets young people between 12 and 18 years old and their teachers. The starting point is a series of common questions about the colonial process and its noticeable after-effects to this day. Each question will be answered by providing a synthesis of recent scientific research, digitised sources and interactive digital storytelling. The toolbox will also provide an overview of other existing online pedagogical tools related to Belgian colonialism.
In this first phase, the CoSo infrastructure project works with the (digitised) collections and research tools developed by the State Archives, the AfricaMuseum and the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences. Yet, CoSo aims to add and use the collections and tools of other institutions in the future.
CoSo’s ambition is to create an international go-to platform for the colonial archives and history of Belgium, Burundi, the DR Congo and Rwanda. The CoSo infrastructure will not only allow institutions to share their colonial archives via a central platform, but will also offer them tools to further enrich these collections. This can be done both via (semi-)automatic enrichment methods such as OCR, HTR and NER but also via (semi-)public crowdsourcing projects.
In the longer term, CoSo aims to foster scientific research, societal reflection and (inter)national cooperation on the shared colonial heritage of Belgium, Burundi, DR Congo and Rwanda.
