The railway that budgeted for its dead

Between 1921 and 1934, France had 512 kilometres of railway built from Brazzaville to the Atlantic, by men conscripted as far away as Chad. Before sending them, its administration wrote in a report that five per cent of them would die. Villagers called the worksite « the machine » and said that going there meant running to your death. Nobody yet knows how many never came back.

Great figuresColonial historyAnticolonial resistanceMemory and redressJustice and trialsRepublic of the CongoMMalemaleRARaphaël Antonetti