EARLY BELGIAN COLONIAL EFFORTS - The University of Texas at ...

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Acknowledgements made three or four years after the event run the risk of
omission. Hopefully no one who has rendered a service or time in the research of this
work will be omitted. If I have not acknowledged a person or institution, I am truly
sorry.
First and foremost I want to thank my patient and supportive wife who may have
regretted her remark in 2001 “Go ahead and go for your Ph.D., you have talked about it
for decades.” She has spent hundreds of hours helping with this dissertation and other
requirements of the program. This of course forced her to travel to Brussels, Paris,
London, Southampton, San Antonio and Austin, but someone had to do it! My children
too have born the brunt of this work but hopefully they have grown with the experience.
Almost from the beginning, Dr. Françoise Peemans and her staff, including
Didie Amaury, at the Archives du ministère des affaires etrangères at du commerce
extérieur have put up with my poor French and strange requests over the last four years,
almost always on short notice and with insufficient information. Dr. Peter Boijen and
his staff at the Archives du musée royal de l’armée et d’histoire militaire have always
provided information whether in person, by post or by email. The Archives du Palais
Royal is well served by Dr. Gustaf Janseens who never questioned my requests for
information regarding the correspondence of Leopold I and anything else royal. The
staff of the cartographic section of the Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier including Gérard
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