Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza
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Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazzà, best known as Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza (January 26, 1852 - September 14, 1905) was a Franco-Italian explorer, born in Italy and later naturalized French. He single-handedly opened up for France entry along the right bank of the Congo that eventually led to French colonies in West Africa. His easy manner and great physical charm and his pacific approach among Africans were his trademark.
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[edit] Biography
Born in Rome, Pietro Paolo di Brazzà he was the seventh son of Count Ascanio Savorgnan di Brazzà, a nobleman of Udine with many French connections. Pietro won entry to the French naval school at Brest, graduated as an ensign, and went on the Jeanne d'Arc to Algeria, where he was horrified to see French troops shooting down Kabyle insurgents.
His next ship was the Venus, which stopped at Gabon regularly, and in 1874 de Brazza made two trips, up the Gabon and Ogoue rivers. He then proposed to the government that he explore the Ogoue to its source, and with the help of friends in high places, including Jules Ferry and Leon Gambetta, he secured partial funding, the rest coming out of his own pocket. He also became a naturalized French citizen at this time, adopting the French spelling of his name.
In this expedition, which lasted from 1875-1878, armed with cotton textiles and tools to use for barter, accompanied only by a doctor and a naturalist and a dozen Senegalese infantrymen, Brazza charmed and talked his way deep inland.
The French authorized a second mission, 1879-1882. Reaching the Congo River in 1880, Brazza proposed to King Makoko of the Batekes that he place his kingdom under the protection of the French flag. Makoko, interested in trade possibilities and in gaining an edge over his rivals, signed a treaty. Makoko also arranged for the establishment of a French settlement at Ncuna on the Congo's Malebo Pool, a place later known as Brazzaville.
In 1886 he was named governor-general of the French Congo. Journalists' reports of the contrast between the decent wages and humane conditions there contrasted with the personal regime of Belgian King Léopold on the opposite bank, in the Congo Free State, made him some important enemies, and a mounting smear campaign in the French press led to his dismissal in 1898. By 1905 he was asked to look into the colonial conditions, which had deteriorated during his absence, but the National Assembly voted to suppress his embarrassing report, a copy of which was found amongst his personal effects after his death. He died suddenly of a fever at Dakar. There were rumors that he had been poisoned.
The epitaph for his burial site in Algiers reads "une mémoire pure de sang humain" ('a memory untainted by human blood').
A mausoleum has been built in his honour in Brazzaville. On 30 September 2006, his remains were exhumed in Algiers<ref>Africa explorer's remains exhumed, BBC News, 30 September 2006</ref> to be reinterred in Brazzaville on 3 October, along with those of his wife and four children.<ref>African nation builds £1.4m marble mausoleum for colonial master, The Guardian, 4 October 2006</ref>
[edit] References
- Richard West, Brazza of the Congo (1972)
- Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (1991)
- Maria Petringa, Brazza, A Life for Africa (2006)
[edit] Notes
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[edit] External links
- From Our Correspondent: Final return to Congo, BBC News, 23 September 2006
- A site dedicated to Brazza's life and times (in French or Italian)
- Fondation Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (in French)
- Maria Petringa's 1997 "Brief Life of a Lover of Africa"de:Pierre Brazza
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