Henri Duveyrier

Henri Duveyrier traveller and Geographer, born on February 28th, 1840, is the son of the Saint-Simonian Charles Duveyrier. Intending for a career in the trade, this one sends it of 1854 to 1855 in Germany, to make him follow commercial studies. But as of this time, it has, as it will entrust it later, the intention to explore " some unknown part of Afrique". It tears off with his father the permission to make a court run test in Algérie, which it achieves in spring 1857 pennies the direction of the geographer Oscar Mac-Carthy, which 25 years later will help Charles de Foucauld in his voyage to the Morocco. Duveyrier draws from this tour an account published after his death under the title: Newspaper of voyage in the province of Algiers .

May 1st, 1859, the young explorer leaves Paris for the voyage which was going to make it famous. After several months spent in the the Sahara Algerian and Tunisian, it reaches Ghadamès in August 1860, and manages to attract itself the protection of the Tuareg chief Ikhenoukhen, near whom it remains seven months. Its intention is to join Sudan, but tiredness obliges it to give up, and it gains Tripoli on August 2nd, 1861, from where a vapor brings back it to Algiers in October. There, a serious disease (perhaps the Typhus) the terrace, and leaves it several months without memory and reason. Its host in Algiers, the Saint-Simonian Auguste Warnier, specialist in the world " indigène" , seizes its notes and starts to write in its place the report/ratio requested by the government of Algeria. This report will be published in 1864 pennies the title the Tuaregs of North . It is difficult, today still, to distinguish what comes from Duveyrier and what comes from Warnier in this book, but it seems that the contribution of Warnier relates to only the plan and the drafting and not the bottom, which belongs to Duveyrier. This book is worth at once with the young explorer the large gold medal of the Société of Geography, of which it becomes one of the pillars.

Its book gave Touaregs Kel Ajjer a favorable image. The portrait was not inaccurate, but the Touaregs could not keep this face débonnaire since the French would advance as conquerors in their country. However it is well what was not long in occurring. One even projected to make cross the Sahara by the railroad. A column in charge of a preparatory study left Laghouat in November 1880 and undertook under the direction of the colonel Paul Flatters to cross Hoggar. She was massacred with the beginning of the year 1881. Moreover, now that the Tuaregs understood that these isolated travellers were only the avant-garde of an occupying army, their attitude was done hostile, and other Europeans underwent the same fate as Flatters. Not suspecting how much the Tuaregs were frightened French expansion in the Sahara, Duveyrier did not manage to be explained their increasing hostility towards the travellers who risked themselves on their premises. And he thought of being able to allot it to carried out occult of Senoussiyya, a brotherhood founded at the beginning of the century. He expressed his assumptions, rather extravagant, in a booklet published in 1884: the Moslem brotherhood of Sîdi Mohammed Ben `Ali Es-Senoûsî and his geographical field, in the year 1300 of the hégire - 1883 of our era . Very affected by the events of the Sahara, also disappointed not to have been able to undertake new voyages (if one excludes in 1874 his participation in the mission François Elie Roudaire in Algeria, in the area of the Chotts, and three short voyages in Tripolitaine and to Morocco, in 1883,1885 and 1886), Duveyrier in addition seems to be felt abandoned when, on January 16th, 1890, his/her friend Charles de Foucauld left the century to enter to the Trap door of Our-Lady-of-Snows. It gave itself death on April 25th, 1892, at the 52 years age. The historian Jean-Louis Triaud spoke about him like " pure lost in the siècle".

Sources

the Gold book of Algeria , Narcisse Falcon, Challamel and Co Editors Algerian and Colonial Bookstore, 1889.

Jean-Louis Triaud, 1995. the black legend of Sanûsiyya. A Moslem brotherhood under the French glance (1840-1930) , Paris, Editions of the House of the social sciences, 2 volumes.

Michael Heffernan, 1989. The limits off utopia: Henri Duveyrier and the exploration off the Sahara in the nineteenth century, The Geographical Newspaper 155 (3), 1989: 349-352.

Rene Pottier, 1938. an ignored Saharan prince. Henri Duveyrier. Paris.

Dominique Casajus, the Saharan destiny of a Saint-Simonian rebels: Henri Duveyrier at the Tuaregs, 2003

Dominique Casajus, Henri Duveyrier and the desert of the Saint-Simonians, 2004

Dominique Casajus, Henri Duveyrier vis-a-vis Childish, rebellious or rival Prosper? , 2005

Henri Duveyrier, 1864, the exploration of the Sahara. Tuaregs of North. Paris, Challamel.

Henri Duveyrier, 1884, the Moslem brotherhood of Sîdi Mohammed Ben `Ali Es-Senoûsî and his geographical field, in the year 1300 of the hégire - 1883 of our era , Paris, Company of Geography.

Henri Duveyrier, 2006. Newspaper of a voyage in the province of Algiers , Paris, Editions of the Calus Saints.

Dominique Casajus, 2007. Henri Duveyrier. A Saint-Simonian with the desert , Paris, Ibis Near.

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