Alphonse Jacques de Dixmude

The authors shed a new light on Alphonse Jacques de Dixmude (1858-1928), the man who has been occupying a place of honour on the market of Dixmude since 1930, but whose reputation far exceeds the city's boundaries. They highlight the colonial and military career of Alphonse Jacques de Dixmude. On the basis of new and previously unpublished sources they outline the fascinating but bumpy course of this remarkable figure during the most turbulent decades in Belgian history: from Dixmude to lake Tanganyika in Central Africa and from the rubber plantations in the damp Congolese jungle to the deadly trenches around the Yser during the First World War. They also discuss the questionable reputation of the man and the controversy surrounding the statue on the Market today.