“Des millions à l’eau”

Building on the rich archival documentation kept in the Belgian State Archives, this paper reconstructs the building process of the harbour of Ango-Ango. Through a thick description of the construction site, a wide variety of actors are brought to the fore: e.g. the British harbour experts Perry & Co. Ltd. (known for the construction of Tower Bridge), German engineering firm Grün & Bilfinger, Belgian consultant engineers, Russian building site overseers, etc. Hence, this paper reveals the multifaceted and international breadth of such a key colonial building site in the 1920s, complementing the bilateral connections that are often highlighted in research on colonial construction. This research further discloses how this variety of actors led to all sorts of meddling by potential stakeholders, revealing how even seemingly pure technical issues, like the constructive solution of an engineer, were in fact socially constructed.