EAP844/1/1

This dossier contains a number of files having to do with land issues and processes connected to such land issues (including ‘native’ rights, missionaries’ observations, and the sometimes hostile relations between administrative officials and French colonial settlers). The processes reflected within the dossier are from the city and region of Loango, which, until the early 1920s, remained the centre of the colonial presence (with regard to trade and the export economy) in the Middle-Congo. The dossier especially allows to reconstruct the goals and dealings of concession companies, although the perspective is mainly that of the colonial administration. It includes information on the earliest phase of the presence of concessions, in the 1880s, and also offers impressions that help to understand the decline of Loango after the First World War.

It is most likely that these files come from the Archives of the District of Kouilou, as the district authorities seem to have organised them into one dossier in response to land claims in the early 1940s.