Pierre de Brazza

Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazzà, later known as Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza; 26 January 1852 – 14 September 1905), was an Italian-born, naturalized French explorer. With his family's financial help, he explored the Ogooué region of Central Africa, and later with the backing of the Société de Géographie de Paris, he reached far into the interior along the right bank of the Congo. He has often been depicted as a man of friendly manner, great charm and peaceful approach towards the Africans he met and worked with on his journeys, but recent research has revealed that he in fact alternated this kind of approach with more calculated deceit and at times relentless armed violence towards local populations. Under French colonial rule, the capital of the Republic of the Congo was named Brazzaville after him and the name was retained by the post-colonial rulers, one of the few African nations to do so. (Other exceptions are Pretoria, South Africa; Port Louis, Mauritius; Libreville, Gabon; and Victoria, Seychelles.)

Early years

Born in Rome, Pietro Savorgnan di Brazzà was the seventh of thirteen children. His father Ascanio Savorgnan di Brazzà, was a nobleman and well known artist, from a family with ancient Friulian origins and many French connections. His mother Giacinta Simonetti, from an old Roman family with Venetian roots, was 24 years younger than his father. From an early age, Pietro was interested in explorations, particularly in West Africa, and he won entry to the French naval school Academy of Borda at Brest. �In 1870, he graduated and sailed aboard the French ship ''Jeanne d'Arc'' to Algeria, where he witnessed the bloody crushing of the Mokrani Revolt. This committed him to a philosophy of non-violence throughout his life.

Exploration in Africa

Brazza first encountered Africa in 1872, while sailing on an anti-slavery mission near Gabon. His next ship was the ''Vénus'', which stopped at Gabon regularly. In 1874 Brazza made two trips into the interior, up the Gabon and Ogooué rivers. He then proposed to the government that he explore the Ogooué to its source. With the help of friends in high places, including Jules Ferry and Leon Gambetta, he secured partial funding, the rest coming from his own pocket. He was granted French citizenship in 1874,
and adopted the French spelling of his name. His efforts to gain citizenship had been aided by Louis Raymond de Montaignac de Chauvance, who acted as de Brazza's patron in the early years of his career.

In this expedition, which lasted from 1875–1878, 'armed' only with cotton textiles and tools to use for barter, and accompanied by a medical doctor, Noel Ballay, a naturalist, Alfred Marche, his assistant Victor Hamon, twelve Senegalese laptots, four Gabonese interpreters and his cook Chico, the explorer made his way deep inland where no other European had ventured because of the river dwellers' resistance. But Brazza's lack of fear and peaceful demeanor gained him the trust of the people encountered. Upon his return to Paris he was fêted as a celebrity in the French press and was courted by the French political elite as the man to advance their imperialist ambitions in Africa.

The French authorized a second mission, which was carried out 1879-1882. The French had adjudged his first mission a success and felt that a mission to the Congo Basin was needed to prevent Henry M. Stanley at the service of King Leopold of Belgium from occupying the entire area. By following the Ogoué River upstream and proceeding overland to the Lefini River and then downstream, Brazza succeeded in reaching the Congo River in 1880 without encroaching on Portuguese claims.Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong, Henry Louis Gates, ''Dictionary of African Biography, Volume 6'', OUP USA, 2012, p. 3

Brazza then was received by King Makoko Iloo I of the Batéké in what was the most significant encounter of his career as an explorer. Brazza proposed to King Makoko that he place his kingdom under the protection of the French flag. King Makoko, aware of Stanley's advance and interested in trade possibilities and gaining an edge over his rivals, signed the treaty. The terms of this treaty were upheld after the king's death by his queen, Ngalifourou, who became Queen Mother and an influential figure in French colonial life. Brazza respected Ngalifourou so much that he presented her with a sabre. Makoko also arranged for the establishment of a French settlement at Mfoa on the Congo's Malebo Pool, a place later known as Brazzaville; after Brazza's departure, the outpost was manned by two Laptots under the command of Senegalese Sergeant Malamine Camara, whose resourcefulness had impressed de Brazza during their several months together trekking inland from the coast. During this trip he encountered Stanley near Vivi. Brazza did not tell Stanley that he had just signed a treaty with Makoko; it took Stanley some months to realize that he had been beaten in the "race" set by his sponsor, King Leopold. Brazza was again celebrated in France for his efforts. The press dubbed him "le conquérant pacifique", the peaceful conqueror, for his success in ensuring French imperial expansion without waging war.

In 1883,''Histoire militaire des colonies, pays de protectorate et pays sous mandat.'' 7.
Histoire militaire de l'Afrique Équatoriale française
. 1931. Accessed 9 October 2011. Brazza was named governor-general of the French Congo in 1886. He was dismissed in 1897 due to poor revenue from the colony and journalist reports of conditions for the natives that some said were "too good." For his part Brazza had become disillusioned with the exploitative and repressive practices of the concessionary companies, which he had witnessed first-hand.

By 1905, stories had reached Paris of injustice, forced labour and brutality under the ''laissez-faire'' approach of the Congo's new governor, Émile Gentil, to the new concession companies set up by the French Colonial Office and condoned by Prosper Philippe Augouard, Catholic Bishop of the Congo. Brazza was sent to investigate these stories and the resulting report was revealing and damning, in spite of many obstructions placed in his path. When his deputy Félicien Challaye put the embarrassing report before the National Assembly, the report was suppressed.

The oppressive conditions in the French Congo continued for decades.

Personal life

Brazza's younger brother, Jacques Savorgnan de Brazza, was a mountaineer and naturalist who accompanied Pierre to Africa in 1883–1886. Brazza married Thérèse de Chambrun, and as a result, Pierre de Chambrun and Charles de Chambrun were his brothers-in-law. Meanwhile, René de Chambrun, the son-in-law of Vichy France Prime Minister Pierre Laval, was his nephew.

Brazza became a Freemason in 1888. He was initiated at the "Alsace-Lorraine" lodge in Paris, on 26 June 1888.

Death and legacy

In September 1905 toward the end of his ''Mission Extraordinaire'', Brazza became sick. On the return voyage to France, when the ship docked in Dakar, he was brought to the hospital where he died at the age of fifty-three with his wife Thérèse at his side. His body was repatriated to France and he was given a state funeral at Sainte-Clotilde, Paris, but Thérèse, who always maintained that her husband had been poisoned by the colonial authorities, refused the honor of burial in the Pantheon and buried him temporarily at the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris. Later, Thérèse had Brazza's body exhumed and re-interred in Algiers (capital of present-day Algeria). The epitaph on his burial site in Algiers reads: ''"Une mémoire pure de sang humain"'' ("a memory untainted by human blood").

Tribute

The fish ''Enteromius brazzai'' is named in his honor. The catfish '' Atopochilus savorgnani'' is also named in his honor. (The De Brazza's monkey '' Cercopithecus neglectus'' and the evergreen shrub ''Pentadiplandra brazzeana'', however, are named for his brother Jacques.)

The French Navy aviso , completed in 1933 and sold in 1957, was named for Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza.

Brazzaville Mausoleum

In February 2005 Presidents Nguesso of Congo, Ondimba of Gabon and Chirac of France gathered at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone for a memorial to Pierre de Brazza, a mausoleum of Italian marble. On 30 September 2006, Brazza's remains were exhumed in Algiers along with those of his wife and four children. They were reinterred in Brazzaville on 3 October in a new, marble mausoleum built for them at a cost of some 10 million dollars. The reburial ceremony was attended by three African presidents and a French foreign minister, who paid tribute to Brazza's humanitarian work against slavery and the abuse of African workers.

Mausoleum controversy

The decision to honor Brazza as a founding father of the Republic of the Congo has elicited protests among many Congolese. '' Mwinda Press'', the journal of the Association of Congolese Democrats in France wrote articles quoting Théophile Obenga who depicted de Brazza as a colonizer and not a humanist. He was declared to have raped a Congolese woman, who was a princess and the equivalent of a Vestal Virgin, and to have pillaged villages, raising highly charged questions as to why the colonizer should be revered as a national hero instead of the Congolese who fought against colonization.

Notes

References

* Maria Petringa, ''Brazza, A Life for Africa'', Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006,
* Thomas Pakenham, '' The Scramble for Africa'' (1991)
* Richard West, ''Brazza of the Congo'' Victorian & Modern History Book Club (1973)
* Emanuela Ortis - "Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza: heròs du Friul" (2003) Radici n.9
* Théophile Obenga - Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza à la cour royale du Makoko,

Congolese reaction to the Mausoleum controversy

External links

* , BBC News, 23 September 2006

A site dedicated to Brazza's life and times (in French, Italian and English)




* ttp://globalvoices.org/2006/10/09/congo-brazzaville-should-a-colonizer-be-honored-like-a-founding-father/ Congolese reaction to the Mausoleum controversy ( in French and English)*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brazza, Pierre Savorgnan De
1852 births
1905 deaths
People from Castel Gandolfo
Explorers of Africa
Italian explorers
Italian emigrants to France
French explorers
École Navale alumni
French city founders
History of Brazzaville
People of French Equatorial Africa
French Freemasons