FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W2938472613> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W2938472613 endingPage "406" @default.
• W2938472613 startingPage "392" @default.
• W2938472613 abstract "Much against the advice of his military counsellors about static fortifications being obsolete in an age and continent of gunboat diplomacy, the Belgian king Leopold II took a resolute stand. Holding on to the doctrine of positional warfare that had turned Belgium into an impregnable fortress in previous decades, he wanted the biggest guns mounted in the biggest fort of central Africa. In 1890 construction took off in Shinkakasa, strategically located within a stone’s throw of the Congo Free State’s capital Boma. Dominating the Congo river’s estuary, the fort was supposed to temper Portuguese and French ambitions towards the central African hinterland. In 1901, during the final stages of its construction, the fort was the scene of a particularly painful incident, when Leopold’s own Force Publique – forcefully recruited from Congo’s villages as cheap labour for the construction site – turned the guns towards the capital. In contrast to scholarly attention devoted to the rebellion in Shinkakasa, the construction phase remains somewhat underexposed. Nevertheless, the case is an interesting exception for the central African context, where construction remained largely dependent on indigenous building materials and knowhow until the 1920s. The building site of Shinkakasa demonstrates how, even in an early colonial context, a one-to-one translation of Belgian building science and technology clashes with local realities. The first (large-scale) application of concrete, the military management of the building site and the introduction of state-of-the-art equipment were all at odds with the scarcity of imported building materials, the reliance on indigenous knowhow, the difficult communication with experts in the Metropole, and the – alleged – incompetency of ‘unskilled’ black labour. In this paper we argue that the colonial building site can hardly be understood as the simple export of fully mastered building technologies ‘from the West to the Rest’. While most construction historians working on Africa have been focusing on the export of (prefabricated) building(s) technologies to the continent, a more recent interest in different actors of the construction process – in particular the Colonial Public Works Departments, private contracting companies and (still incipient) African labour – sparked a true postcolonial turn in the construction history of the non-West.With the archives of the Congo Free State largely destroyed, picturing the building site conditions is a challenging task. Nevertheless, a series of photographs in the archives of the Royal Museum for Central Africa gives a surprisingly inclusive image of the realities on the building site. In particular the African labourers take up a central role in these images, all the more striking if juxtaposed to the few written testimonies of the construction site by engineers or high-ranked military personnel. While in these official reports black labourers are always reduced to ‘man-hours of unskilled labour’, several of the photographs offer a more nuanced perspective on construction in a colonial context. The case is formatted as a ‘visual essay’ in which diptychs of photographs are juxtaposed to the few written sources as to trace different tensions present on the building site." @default.
• W2938472613 created "2019-04-25" @default.
• W2938472613 creator A5006812644 @default.
• W2938472613 creator A5041400960 @default.
• W2938472613 date "2019-01-01" @default.
• W2938472613 modified "2023-09-27" @default.
• W2938472613 title "The visual, the accidental and the actual in the historiography of the fort of Shinkakasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, 1891- 1909" @default.
• W2938472613 hasPublicationYear "2019" @default.
• W2938472613 type Work @default.
• W2938472613 sameAs 2938472613 @default.
• W2938472613 citedByCount "0" @default.
• W2938472613 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W2938472613 hasAuthorship W2938472613A5006812644 @default.
• W2938472613 hasAuthorship W2938472613A5041400960 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C11413529 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C166957645 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C18903297 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C205649164 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C2776211767 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C2779343474 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C2780060422 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C41008148 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C48103436 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C531593650 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C555826173 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C557252395 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C55958113 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C6303427 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C86803240 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C94625758 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C11413529 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C166957645 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C17744445 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C18903297 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C199539241 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C205649164 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C2776211767 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C2779343474 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C2780060422 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C41008148 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C48103436 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C531593650 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C555826173 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C557252395 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C55958113 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C6303427 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C86803240 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C94625758 @default.
• W2938472613 hasConceptScore W2938472613C95457728 @default.
• W2938472613 hasLocation W29384726131 @default.
• W2938472613 hasOpenAccess W2938472613 @default.
• W2938472613 hasPrimaryLocation W29384726131 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W1992022540 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W1994985546 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W1995839095 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2017729121 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2107463079 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2169354152 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2171072073 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2300332787 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2307040677 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2326936123 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2467485288 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2479324308 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2489332271 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2622619357 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2897398036 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2963776689 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W340701605 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2331030158 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W2538922884 @default.
• W2938472613 hasRelatedWork W3119004310 @default.
• W2938472613 isParatext "false" @default.
• W2938472613 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W2938472613 magId "2938472613" @default.
• W2938472613 workType "article" @default.