Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza

Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza (born with Rome the January 26th 1852, deceased with Dakar the September 14th 1905) was a naturalized Explorateur French Italian. He explored Right Bank of the Fleuve Congo opening the way with French colonization in equatorial Africa. Its good-naturedness, its charm, its peaceful approach of the Africans made of Brazza a figure of exception among its contemporaries who explored Africa in the name of the Western great powers.

A peaceful and altruistic explorer

Born with Rome, with Castel Gandolfo, under the name of “Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazzà”, the future explorer is the seventh wire of the twelve children of the count Ascanio Savorgnan di Brazzà, noble of Udine. This cultivated man and traveller had many French friends, of which prestigious Général Louis Eugene Cavaignac. With its support and that of its tutor, Pietro comes to Paris and follows the courses of the Holy-Genevieve college to prepare the entrance examination to the Naval college of Brest. It there returns at 17 years, out of spring sign of vessel and embarks on the Jeanne d' Arc for the Algérie. Over there, it is horrified by violence at repression at the revolt kabyle by the French troops. The war of 1870 is then declared: he wants to be affected in a combat unit. He benefits to ask French naturalization and finds from it on the battleship Revenge , in one of the squadrons of the the North Sea.

With the advent of the IIIe Republic, its second assignment is the frigate Venus , which made regularly stopover with the Gabon. In 1874, Brazza twice goes up the Gabon river and the Ogooué. He then proposes with the government to explore Ogooué until his source, in order to show that this river and Congo does only one. With the assistance of friends placed well, like Jules Ferry and Leon Gambetta, obtains subsidies, which he does not hesitate to supplement with his own resources. At the same time it is naturalized French and adopts the Francization of its name. It must however return a few months to Paris to pass its diploma for the occupation of captain to the long course, in order to remain in the naval one and to continue its intention.

For this forwarding which lasts of 1875 with 1878, it is provided with fabrics of cotton and tools for barter. It is only accompanied by a doctor, a naturalist and a dozen Senegalese infantrymen. Brazza is inserted in the interior of the grounds, and succeeds in maintaining good relationships with the local population, thanks to its charm and its glibness. Its forwarding is however a failure on the scientific level, because the two rivers are quite different. In any event, on August 11th, 1878, Brazza and its companions of exploration, tired and sick, decide to make half-turn.

At the same time, a journalist of the New York Herald, Stanley, in the search of Livingstone, disappeared in the area from the Big lakes, found not only the British missionary, but also descended the Fleuve Congo. In 1879, the king of the Belgian , Léopold II, wanting to benefit from the situation for the interests of its country, missionne the journalist for the construction of a railway line.

Foundation of future Brazzaville

Under the impulse of the Minister for the State education Jules Ferry, the French government then authorizes a second mission, 1879 - 1882 in collaboration with Antoine Mizon to make part with the Belgian colonial aimings on the African continent. Financed by the French company of geography like by the ministries for the Navy, the Foreign affairs and the State education, the second mission is definitely more profitable. Party the December 27th 1879, Brazza reaches the Fleuve Congo in 1880. He proposes with Illoy I {{er}}, Makoko de Mbe, king of the Téké S, to place his kingdom under the protection of France. Makoko, pushed by commercial interests and the possibility of weakening its rivals, signs the treaty, also allowing a French establishment Nkuna on Congo, place called later Brazzaville. While trying to rejoin the ocean since Franceville, Brazza falls by chance on the original intention of its research: sources of Ogooué.

Of return in France, it popularizes its discoveries graces to multiple public meetings and press articles. The November 30th 1882, the law ratifying the treaty of friendship, signed between Illoy Ier and Brazza, is promulgated. The areas discovered are in fact placed under French protectorate. One month later, of new appropriations is voted for the third forwarding. In November 1885, it is named general police chief of the French Congo. Journalists give a report of the decent wages and the human conditions which contrasted with the personal mode of Léopold II on other bank of Congo. But its success gets also enmities to him and it is subjected to an intense denigration campaign.

Birth of a legend

August 12th 1895, Pierre de Brazza marries Therese Pineton of Chambrun, girl of Charles-Antoine of Chambrun and Marie-Henriette Tricuy de Corcelle, and downward of Fayette. The marriage is celebrated in the private vault of the hotel of the count de Chambrun, street Mister with Paris. The couple will have four children: Jacques, born in 1899 and deceased four years later of a crisis of Appendicitis, Antoine, Charles and Marthe

In 1897, Brazza is opposed to the decision of the minister Colonies, André Lebon, to subject the territories which it gained in France with the mode of the concession, already into force in Belgian Congo, and which would deliver the populations to the cupidity of the private capitalist companies charged “to emphasize” this territory of: 650000 km ² composed of the Gabon, the Congo and the Oubangui-Chari.

In January 1898, Brazza is drawn aside and placed “in the situation of setting of availability” Merchant and his officers (baratier, Largeau wire, future founder of CHAD. .etc.) declared responsible for the delay of mission CONGO-NIL. Merchant describes the colony of French Congo managed by Brazza a " marsh puant" directed by " glories in baudruche". Jean Victor LARGEAU, explorer of the Sahara and Congo and administrator of Loango and dependences under the orders of Brazza, in his correspondences made a not very flattering portrait of Brazza, called it " farniente" taking into account its propensity circulated in hammock carried by blacks and of its absence of decision " The disorder which one notices around him, débraillé of its behavior, are the repercussions of its intellectual state, it does not have any arrété plan, changes ideas 20 times per day and the moment to act come, it yields to the impulse of this moment ". " The same disorder reigns in all the branches of the service: the wasting is terrible: one goes from before because the ministry requires it, but without nothing to organize ....... etc… " (letter of the 5.-11-1891 with his/her son). He withdraws with Algiers the companies which share the exploitation of these countries decimate the populations, subjected to violences and brutalities: bearing, forced labors, requisitions and repression of any attempt at resistance: simple continuation of the previous period.

In 1905, following the scandal of the business Hat-Gaud (see below), one requires of him to inspect the living conditions in the colonies, conditions which had worsened during its absence. But its health worsens. With the return of its mission, reached high fevers, it is constrained to unload with Dakar. September 14th, 1905, taken care by his wife and the Mangin captain, he dies at six o'clock in the evening. The photograph of Jacques, his five year old child, missing two years before, was placed at its request on its night table.

The noise runs that it was poisoned. As for the National Assembly, she hastens to put its embarrassing report/ratio under the extinguisher. Its body is initially claimed by the French government. The Third Republic seeks its new heroes indeed. Brazza, naval officer aristocrat, elegant, heroic, revolted by the slave system, apostle of peace, and especially not involved, have a perfect profile in all these connections. One thus thinks for him of the the Pantheon and the recovery of his intact glory. But its family obtains that it is finally buried with Algiers, out of African ground. On its tomb, the epitaph, written by his/her friend Charles de Chavannes, indicates that “Its memory is pure of human blood. He succumbed on September 14th, 1905 during a last mission undertaken to safeguard the rights of the natives and the honor of the nation”. With its death an adventure finishes in which it consumed family fortune.

Brazza versus Stanley

Partisan of the palaver, savagely opposed to violence, it keeps like model Livingstone and is opposed in that to Stanley, called “Boula Matari” (“breaker of rocks”), which was praised to have delivered 32 engagements. Initially little being wary, even admiring with its regard, Stanley will realize too late that it was rolled in the flour by the French, who does not inform it of the treaty that it signed with Makoko. The reputation of Stanley will suffer from it durably, in France, where he will sharply be criticized, and in England, where his naivety will be narguera. One year after the signature of the treaty between Brazza and Makoko, the king Téké of the tribes of left bank, Ngaliema, sign the “treaty of the friendship” with Stanley, being considered more subjected to Makoko de Mbé. It thus places Right Bank of the river under the protection of the African International association.

The business Hat-Gaud

July 14th, 1903, in Fort Crampel, in Oubangui-Chari, an administrator of the colonies, George Hat, and a clerk of the indigenous businesses, Fernand Gaud, decides to make carry out Pakpa, old guide, by attaching a dynamite around the neck to him. The lawsuit, the defendants remind that they declared before this terrible action: “That with the idiotic air; but that will médusera the natives. So after that they are not held quiet! ” . Gaud will say to its lawsuit that he wanted to make note around him the strangeness of this death: “Neither trace of rifle shot, nor trace of blow of sagaie: it is by a kind of miracle that died which had not wanted to make friendship with the White. ” (reported remarks by Félicien Challaye, which accompanied Brazza in its mission by inspection). They are condemned to light sorrows (at five years of reclusion), but the scandal is such as it lead to the launching of an administrative survey, inquire of which will be charged Brazza, and who will be at the origin of his last voyage to Congo.

Transfer of ashes of the explorer

A little more than one hundred years after its death, ashes of the French explorer, his wife and their four children, were exhumed, on October 1st, 2006, of the Christian cemetery of the Daughters-in-law, in the district of El Madania on the heights of Algiers, where it rested since 1905, to be transferred towards Brazzaville.

Two members of the Italian branch of the family of the explorer, Nicola di Brazza and Roberto Pirzio-Biroli, as well as a representative of its French branch, Pierre-Antoine de Chambrun, attended the exhumation of the bodies.

The ambassador of Congo, Jean-Baptiste Dzangue, and the French Consul in Algeria, Francis Heude, ambassadors of France, Hubert Hake of Verdière, Senegal Saïdou Nourou Ba, of Italy, Battista Verderame, and a representative of the Algerian ministry of the Foreign affairs, were also present. The coffin of Savorgnan de Brazza was covered with the French flag.

The remainders were then embarked on board an airfreighter especially chartered by Congo, bound for Franceville then of Brazzaville, where they were reinterred on October 3rd, 2006, in the presence of the presidents Congolese, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Central African, François Bozize, and Gabonese, Omar Bongo Ondimba, and of the French Minister for the Foreign affairs, Philippe Douste-Blazy.

The family vault of Savorgnan de Brazza with Algiers, the monument highest of the cemetery, was surmounted by a bronze bust of the explorer. Located close to the Central Town hall, the mausoleum which received its ashes with Brazzaville is not less imposing. Constituted with a cupola out of steel and glass, covered with 500 tons white marble of Carrara marble, it is decorated inside by a large fresco representing the great moments with the life of the explorer, carried out by artists of the school of painting of the district of Poto-Poto. The bronze bust of Algiers, restored, will accompany the remainders by Brazza in its new mausoleum.

Soon, will begin a new section from work and the construction of a museum, a center of conferences and a library centered on explorations of Savorgnan de Brazza.

Polemics developed with the Congo, in particular, at the time of this transfer. At the time of a conference with Franceville, organized by the foundation Savorgnan de Brazza, of the academics Gabonese and Congolese in particular rose that “of colonized can defend the colonizer” . According to the Gabonese historian Angels Ratanga Atoz, “De Brazza was anything else only one agent of the colonial imperialism, but it was not as brutal as the others” . The cost of the monument (more than 5 million euros), financed by the Congolese government, was also criticized.

Honors

a colonial Aviso French of FNFL bore its name, the Savorgnan-with-Brazza.
Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, was named thus in the honor of Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza.
With Brazzaville, in addition to the mausoleum of Brazza, rises, since 1944, a Commémoratif headlight largely dominating the river the top of the headland of Bacongo vis-a-vis the de Gaulle Box. " there is read; With Savorgnan de Brazza and its compagnons". Terra cotta low-reliefs of Barroux vandalized in the years 1960. Roger Erell architect. The headlight was inaugurated by the girl of Brazza, Marthe de Brazza, in 1952.
With Paris, only small a 95 m length street, connecting the Champ de Mars to the avenue of Bourdonnais, recalls the memory of the explorer.

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