Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza (born in Rome on January 26, 1852, died in Dakar on September 14, 1905) was an Italian explorer naturalized French. He explored the right bank of the Congo River, opening the way to French colonization in Equatorial Africa. His good nature, his charm, his peaceful approach to Africans made Brazza an exceptional figure among his contemporaries who explored Africa on behalf of the great Western powers.
A peaceful and altruistic explorer
Born in Rome, in Castel Gandolfo, under the name of “Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazzà”, the future explorer was the seventh son of the twelve children of Count Ascanio Savorgnan di Brazzà, a nobleman from Udine. This cultured man and traveler had many French friends, including the prestigious General Louis Eugène Cavaignac. With his support and that of his tutor, Pietro comes to Paris and follows the courses of the Sainte-Geneviève college to prepare for the entrance examination to the naval school of Brest. He returned there at the age of 17, came out as a ship's ensign and embarked on the Joan of Arc for Algeria. There, he is horrified by the violence of the repression of the Kabyle revolt by the French troops. The war of 1870 was then declared:he wanted to be assigned to a combat unit. He took the opportunity to apply for French naturalization and found himself on the battleship La Revanche, in one of the North Sea squadrons.
With the advent of the Third Republic, his second assignment was the frigate Vénus, which made regular stops in Gabon. In 1874, Brazza goes twice up the Gabon River and the Ogooué. He then proposed to the government to explore the Ogooué to its source, in order to demonstrate that this river and the Congo are one. With the help of well-placed friends, such as Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta, he obtained subsidies, which he did not hesitate to supplement with his own resources. At the same time he was naturalized French and adopted the francization of his name. However, he must return to Paris for a few months to obtain his long-term captain's diploma, in order to remain in the Naval and pursue his plan.
For this expedition which lasted from 1875 to 1878, he provided himself with cotton canvas and tools for barter. He is only accompanied by a doctor, a naturalist and a dozen Senegalese infantrymen. Brazza sinks inland, and manages to maintain good relations with the local population, thanks to its charm and its patter. His expedition was, however, a scientific failure, because the two rivers were very different. In any case, on August 11, 1878, Brazza and his fellow explorers, tired and sick, decided to turn around.
Around the same time, a reporter from the New York Herald, Stanley, in search of Livingstone, who disappeared in the Great Lakes region, not only found the British missionary, but also descended the Congo River. In 1879, the King of the Belgians, Leopold II, wanting to take advantage of the situation for the interests of his country, commissioned the journalist to build a railway line.
Foundation of the future Brazzaville
Under the impetus of the Minister of Public Instruction Jules Ferry, the French government then authorized a second mission, 1879-1882 in collaboration with Antoine Mizon to counter Belgian colonial aims on the African continent. Funded by the French Geographical Society as well as by the Ministries of the Navy, Foreign Affairs and Public Instruction, the second mission is much more fruitful. Leaving on December 27, 1879, Brazza reached the Congo River in 1880. He proposed to Illoy I, Makoko de Mbe, king of the Tékés, to place his kingdom under the protection of France. The Makoko, driven by commercial interests and the possibility of weakening their rivals, signed the treaty, also allowing a French establishment at Nkuna on the Congo, a place later called Brazzaville. While trying to reach the ocean from Franceville, Brazza stumbled upon the primary goal of his research:the sources of Ogooué.
Back in France, he popularized his discoveries through numerous public meetings and press articles. On November 30, 1882, the law ratifying the friendship treaty, signed between Illoy I and Brazza, was promulgated. The discovered regions are in fact placed under French protectorate. A month later, new credits are voted for a third expedition. In November 1885, he was appointed General Commissioner of the French Congo. Journalists report decent wages and human conditions that contrasted with the personal regime of Leopold II on the other side of the Congo. But his success also brought him enmity and he was subjected to an intense smear campaign.
Birth of a legend
On August 12, 1895, Pierre de Brazza married Thérèse Pineton de Chambrun, daughter of Charles-Antoine de Chambrun and Marie-Henriette Tricuy de Corcelle, and descendant of La Fayette. The wedding is celebrated in the private chapel of the Hôtel du Comte de Chambrun, rue Monsieur in Paris. The couple had four children:Jacques, born in 1899 and who died four years later of appendicitis, Antoine, Charles and Marthe
In 1897, Brazza opposed the decision of the Minister of the Colonies, André Lebon, to submit the territories he had won from France to the concession regime, already in force in the Belgian Congo, and which would deliver the populations to the greed of private capitalist companies in charge of "developing" this territory of 650,000 km² made up of Gabon, Congo and Ubangui-Chari.
In January 1898, Brazza was removed and placed "in the situation of layoff". He retired to Algiers and events quickly proved the explorer right. Indeed, the societies that share the exploitation of these countries decimate the populations, subjected to violence and brutality:porterage, forced labor, requisitions and repression of any attempt at resistance.
In 1905, following the Toqué-Gaud affair scandal (see below), he was asked to inspect living conditions in the colonies, conditions which had deteriorated during his absence. But his health is deteriorating. On his return from his mission, suffering from high fevers, he was forced to disembark in Dakar. On September 14, 1905, watched over by his wife and Captain Mangin, he died at six o'clock in the evening. The photo of Jacques, her five-year-old child, who disappeared two years earlier, was placed on her bedside table at her request.
Rumor has it that he was poisoned. As for the National Assembly, it hastens to put its embarrassing report under the extinguisher. His body is first claimed by the French government. The Third Republic is indeed looking for its new heroes. Brazza, an aristocratic, elegant, heroic naval officer, revolted by slavery, apostle of peace, and above all disinterested, has a perfect profile in all these respects. We therefore think for him of the Pantheon and the recovery of its intact glory. But his family obtains that he is finally buried in Algiers, on African soil. On his tomb, the epitaph, written by his friend Charles de Chavannes, indicates that “His memory is pure of human blood. He succumbed on September 14, 1905 during a last mission undertaken to safeguard the rights of the natives and the honor of the nation. With his death ends an adventure in which he consumed the family fortune.
Brazza versus Stanley
Supporter of palavers, fiercely opposed to violence, he keeps Livingstone as a model and is opposed in this to Stanley, nicknamed "Boula Matari" ("breaker of rocks"), who boasted of having fought 32 fights. Unsuspecting at first, even admiring towards him, Stanley will realize too late that he has been rolled in flour by the Frenchman, who does not inform him of the treaty he has signed with Makoko. Stanley's reputation will suffer for a long time, in France, where he will be harshly criticized, and in England, where his naivety will be mocked. A year after the signing of the treaty between Brazza and the Makoko, the Téké king of the tribes on the left bank, Ngaliema, signed the "treaty of friendship" with Stanley, no longer considering himself subject to the Makoko of Mbé. It thus places the right bank of the river under the protection of the International African Association.
The Toque-Gaud affair
On July 14, 1903, in Fort Crampel, in Oubangui-Chari, a colonial administrator, George Toqué, and a native affairs clerk, Fernand Gaud, decided to have Pakpa, a former guide, executed by tying dynamite around his neck. At trial, the defendants recall that they said before this appalling action:“It looks silly; but it will stun the natives. If after that they don't keep quiet! ". Gaud will say at his trial that he wanted those around him to see the strangeness of this death:"No trace of a gunshot, no trace of an assegai stroke:it is by a kind of miracle that the man who died died. didn't want to make friends with the whites. (Comments reported by Félicien Challaye, who accompanied Brazza on his inspection mission). They were sentenced to light sentences (five years' imprisonment), but the scandal was such that it led to the launch of an administrative investigation, an investigation for which Brazza would be responsible, and which would be the cause of his last trip to Congo.
Transfer of Explorer's Ashes
A little over a hundred years after his death, the ashes of the French explorer, his wife and their four children were exhumed on October 1, 2006 from the Brus Christian cemetery in the El Madania district of the heights of Algiers, where he rested since 1905, to be transferred to Brazzaville.
Two members of the Italian branch of the explorer's family, Nicola di Brazza and Roberto Pirzio-Biroli, as well as a representative of his French branch, Pierre-Antoine de Chambrun, attended the exhumation of the bodies.
The Ambassador of Congo, Jean-Baptiste Dzangue, and the Consul of France in Algeria, Francis Heude, the Ambassadors of France, Hubert Colin de Verdière, of Senegal Saïdou Nourou Ba, of Italy, Battista Verderame, and a representative of the Ministry Algerian Foreign Affairs, were also present. Savorgnan de Brazza's coffin was covered with the French flag.
The remains were then boarded on a cargo plane specially chartered by the Congo, bound for Franceville and then Brazzaville, where they were reburied on October 3, 2006, in the presence of the Congolese presidents, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Central African, François Bozizé, and Gabonese, Omar Bongo Ondimba, and the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Philippe Douste-Blazy.
The Savorgnan de Brazza family vault in Algiers, the highest monument in the cemetery, was surmounted by a bronze bust of the explorer. Located near the Central Town Hall, the mausoleum which received his ashes in Brazzaville is no less imposing. Consisting of a steel and glass dome, covered with 500 tons of white Carrara marble, it is decorated inside by a large fresco representing the great moments in the life of the explorer, created by artists from the painting school in the Poto-Poto district. The bronze bust of Algiers, restored, will accompany the remains of Brazza in his new mausoleum.
Soon, a new phase of work will begin and the construction of a museum, a conference center and a library centered on the explorations of Savorgnan de Brazza.
Controversies have developed in Congo, in particular, on the occasion of this transfer. During a symposium in Franceville, organized by the Savorgnan de Brazza foundation, Gabonese and Congolese academics protested in particular that "colonized people can make the apology of the colonizer". According to Gabonese historian Anges Ratanga Atoz, "De Brazza was nothing more than an agent of colonial imperialism, but he was not as brutal as the others". The cost of the monument (more than 5 million euros), funded by the Congolese government, has also been criticized.
Honors
* A French colonial FNFL aviso bore his name, Savorgnan-de-Brazza.
* Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, was named in honor of Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza .
* In Brazzaville, in addition to the Brazza mausoleum, there has been a commemorative lighthouse since 1944, largely dominating the river from the top of the Bacongo promontory facing Case de Gaulle. It reads "To Savorgnan de Brazza and his companions". The terracotta bas-reliefs of Barroux vandalized in the 1960s. Roger Erell architect. The lighthouse was inaugurated by Brazza's daughter, Marthe de Brazza, in 1952.
* In Paris, only a small street 95 m long, connecting the Champ de Mars to the avenue de la Bourdonnais, recalls the memory of the explorer