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Victor Harou

Belgian soldier and explorer

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ18649350
Source-derived summary

Victor Eugène Jules Harou (25 September 1851 – 12 August 1923) was a Belgian soldier and explorer.

Early years

Victor Eugène Jules Harou was born on 25 September 1851 in Fayt-lez-Seneffe (today Fayt-lez-Manage), Hainaut Province, Belgium.

His parents were Adrien-Victor-Joseph Harou and Victorine-Joséphine-Marguerite Velloni.

His younger brother was Prosper Harou.

He joined the army and entered military school on 1 December 1868.

He entered the War School of 22 September 1874.

He was promoted to lieutenant of the 5th line regiment.

Colonial career

Harou engaged with the Comité d'Etudes du Haut-Congo.

On 15 August 1880 he boarded the Gaboon in Liverpool in the company of Paul Nève, Charles-Marie de Braconnier, Louis Valcke and Vanden Boogaerde.

They transferred to the Biafra at the mouth of the Niger, and reached Banana on 3 October 1880.

Editorial summary

“Victor Harou” enters the record as belgian soldier and explorer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Victor, Harou and Belgian can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1851, 1923, 1868, 1874—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1851-12-25. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Victor, Harou and Belgian.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Victor Harou” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Victor, Harou and Belgian provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18649350. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1851, 1923, 1868 and 1874.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Victor Harou”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Victor Harou primary sources, Victor Harou archive and Victor research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Victor Harou” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.