The knowledge base.

A useful research note records more than a number: it preserves the question, the source and the limits of the answer.

1. 01

   Define the question

   Name the place, period and population. Distinguish a military campaign from decades of rule, and deaths from population decline.

2. 02

   Find the original record

   Record the author, publication date, page or table, and archive link. A quotation repeated on several websites may still come from only one source.

3. 03

   Compare like with like

   Check whether figures count people embarked, arrivals, recorded deaths or reconstructed excess mortality. Different categories cannot simply be added together.

4. 04

   State the uncertainty

   Keep the source’s range and explain missing records. A precise-looking total is not more reliable than an estimate with clearly stated assumptions.

A single figure, however often repeated, is not the same as a verified one. Comparing an administrative count against survivor accounts and later demographic reconstruction usually narrows a range rather than producing one exact number, and that range is the honest answer in most cases.

Sen's Poverty and Famines showed that famine mortality is not simply a function of food supply but of who has the entitlement to access it — a reminder that economic data needs an argument about distribution, not just totals, before it can explain an outcome.

A falling population figure can reflect deaths, but it can also reflect falling birth rates, migration, or simply better counting in a later census. Treating any population drop as a direct death count conflates distinct causes that each need their own evidence.

Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost discusses the Congo Free State’s demographic decline using historical estimates. Its widely cited figure is a reconstruction, not a census of killings, and scholars continue to debate the assumptions and the scale of the decline.

Conquest, day-to-day administration, and the transition to independence produced different kinds of harm through different mechanisms, and evidence from one phase should not be read as describing another. A death toll from a military campaign is not the same category of fact as excess mortality under decades of administrative extraction.

Nkrumah's Neo-Colonialism argued that formal independence did not end economic dependency, a claim that depends on comparing the structure of trade and ownership before and after independence rather than on the date of a flag-raising alone.

Why do death-toll estimates for the same event vary so widely?

Because they rely on different source types — administrative counts, demographic reconstruction, survivor estimates — each with its own assumptions and gaps, and because the underlying records are often incomplete.

Can colonial-era census data be trusted?

Only with caution. Many colonial censuses undercounted certain groups, used inconsistent methods over time, or served administrative purposes that shaped what was counted and how.

Is a photograph reliable evidence on its own?

A photograph shows something real, but its selection, framing and caption were chosen by someone, often to make a specific argument. It should be read alongside its provenance, not treated as neutral.

Should every page on this topic follow the same structure?

No single structure applies everywhere. Some topics have detailed records and support a table of figures; others rest mainly on testimony or later scholarship, and the evidence available should shape how a given page is organised.