Savorgnan de Brazza
Mar 30, 2009 22:08:14 GMT
Post by bixaorellana on Mar 30, 2009 22:08:14 GMT
1) Stamp issued by French Equatorial Africa in 1951 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza (1852-1905). The map on the stamp shows a portion of the east coast of Africa at the southern part of French Equatorial Africa. 2) Postcard showing de Brazza's funeral cortege.
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza was born in Rome on Jan. 25, 1852, the scion of an old aristocratic family.
Admitted to the French Naval Academy in 1868. A midshipman by the time of the Franco-Prussian War, he volunteered for service with the French navy. After the end of the war, Brazza made his first trip to the coast of Gabon with the South Atlantic fleet in 1872-1874. It was at that time that Brazza, undaunted by the failure of a previous French expedition to penetrate to the heart of Equatorial Africa, conceived the idea of using the Ogooué River under the belief that it might connect with the Lualaba - the Upper Congo - recently discovered by David Livingstone. Having secured French citizenship and official approval for his petition to be placed on paid leave, Brazza returned to Gabon in 1875 and sailed up the Ogooué, only to discover that it could not possibly connect with the Lualaba. He then traveled overland to the Alima River (a right-bank affluent of the Congo) but was prevented by hostile tribes from reaching the great river itself, the proximity of which he had in any case failed to grasp.
Returning to Libreville in 1878, Brazza learned of Henry Stanley's successful navigation down the Congo and realized what he had missed. Brazza was invited to enter the service of King Leopold II of Belgium in an effort to secure possession of the Congo Basin for that monarch. Brazza warned the French government instead and secured their approval for his project to outrace Stanley, now working on Leopold's behalf. On Oct. 3, 1880, having successfully negotiated a treaty with the makoko (king) of the Bateke, Brazza set up a French post at the site of modern Brazzaville.
Brazza's last trip to Africa, in 1905, was an inspection tour of conditions in the Congo. In the face of general hostility and deliberate noncooperation by the colonial civil service, Brazza bitterly described what ruthless private exploitation had done to the area that he had opened up to France 25 years earlier.
above cribbed from Answers.com.
A series of photos of de Brazza by Nadar in the 1880s elevated him almost to cult status. Parisian women swore their devotion to him and products bore his name and image. Not all published images of him were glamorous!
To learn more, visit this beautiful site
Of course de Brazza must be viewed in light of the whole history of colonialization in the Congo. Read the history of the Republic of the Congo.