About: Benoît Verhaegen

Benoît Verhaegen (1929–2009) was a Belgian academic and Africanist who specialised in the political sociology and post-colonial history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Verhaegen fought in the Korean War and arrived in the Belgian Congo in 1959 shortly before independence. Sympathising with African nationalism, he remained in the country until 1987 and taught at various institutions in the Congo which became Zaire in 1971. He was increasingly influenced by Marxism and worked particularly on contemporary political movements in the country in the 1960s and 1970s. He formulated the idea of "immediate history" (histoire immédiate) and published a number of important studies and collections of documents.