Archival transcriptions
Transcribed and, where appropriate, translated primary sources underpinning my published and ongoing research, made available for other scholars.
The documents listed here are annual reports, balance sheets, and related corporate records drawn from archives in Europe and beyond. Each transcription is faithful to the original; editorial interventions are marked. Where a source is bilingual, translations are offered alongside the original language to support cross-linguistic scholarship. Where relevant, I have added short analytical notes drawing the reader’s attention to features of the document that have structured my research.
This collection will grow as the underlying research proceeds. If you are working on a related topic and would like access to material not yet published here, please get in touch.
Union Minière du Haut-Katanga
A serialised transcription of the earliest surviving printed annual reports and related disclosures of the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), drawn from the UMHK folder (signatur YW 4300) at the Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv (HWWA) / Hamburgisches Kolonialinstitut. The series runs from the pre-production losses of 1911 through the wartime dividend pause and into the Great Depression crisis of 1933. Together these documents show how a major Belgian-Congolese mining enterprise constructed financial legitimacy for metropolitan audiences across three decades of political, economic, and technological transformation.
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Exercice 1911 — First surviving annual report
Earliest surviving printed annual report in the HWWA UMHK folder. Covers a pre-profit year (fr. 1,742,064 debit balance) and the scaling-up of early Copperbelt production. Rob. Williams & Cie credited explicitly for labour recruitment; Baron Baeyens presides as chairman before his replacement by Jadot.
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Exercice 1912 — First year of profit from exploitation
The first full financial year in which UMHK recorded a profit from exploitation. Earliest surviving general assembly report. The proceedings document the founding concerns of metropolitan shareholders: labour supply, indigenous workforce management, production costs, and infrastructure financing.
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Balance Sheet, 31 December 1913
Published in English in a London trade press outlet rather than a Belgian publication—direct evidence that the primary disclosure audience for UMHK accounts in 1913 was the City of London financial community. Earliest published balance sheet in the HWWA folder for UMHK.
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Six-Year Accounts, 1914–1919
Wartime accounts presented retrospectively at an extraordinary general meeting. Bridges the founding period and the interwar reports. The six-year working-results figure of fr. 93,901,168.99 confirms profitable exploitation throughout the war. Edgar Sengier—the dominant figure of the 1930s—appears here as manager in Brussels.
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Exercice 1933 — Depression-era accounts
Full bilingual transcription of the Board of Directors’ Report and Report of the College of Commissioners for the financial year 1933, including balance sheet, profit and loss account, and decade production table. Primary source for my forthcoming article in Accounting History on accounting, race, and extraction in the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt.