Born January 25, 1852,
Rome, Italy
Died September 14, 1905,
Dakar, Senegal
By the late 1800s the European powers were scrambling to divide the huge continent of Africa among themselves. The rivalry among explorers and countries was intense, and there were inevitably losers and winners. Brazza may be considered a winner. Largely through his efforts his adopted country, France, claimed a significant portion of the Congo. But Brazza would come to fight against the ruthless exploitation of the African population that occurred as these new territories were opened to commercial development.
Pierre-Paul-François-Camille Savorgnan de Brazza was born in Rome on January 25, 1852, the descendant of an aristocratic family. His father was an Italian nobleman who was prominent in nationalist and cultural circles. From the time he was a boy, Brazza was interested in a career at sea. Italy did not have a navy of its own, so Brazza received permission to continue his studies at the naval academy in France. Having become intensely loyal to France, he received his French citizenship in 1874. After serving in the French navy during the Franco-Prussian War, Brazza was assigned to the South Atlantic fleet and visited the western coast of Africa between 1882 and 1884. Although a previous French expedition had unsuccessfully tried to penetrate the interior of Gabon, Brazza believed that it could be done. If the Ogooúe River connected with the Lualaba River, he would have access to the upper Congo, which the English explorer David Livingstone (see entry) had recently discovered.
The French ministry approved his proposals, and Brazza set off from Bordeaux in August 1875. He was only 23 years old. He stopped at a trading post called Lambaréné, a place that later became famous as the site of Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s hospital. He sailed up the Ogooúe only to find that it did not connect with the Lualaba. He then traveled overland to the Alima River, a tributary of the Congo, but was unable to follow it because of hostile tribes. Brazza never knew how close he had come until, shortly after he had returned to France, he learned that Henry Morton Stanley (see entry) had successfully navigated the Congo River.
Brazza’s expedition had made him a hero in France, and he was approached by an agent of King Leopold of Belgium to help him claim further possessions in the Congo. Brazza, ever loyal to France, instead warned the French government of Leopold’s intentions. The French government, now determined to claim part of the Congo, immediately approved an expedition with Brazza in charge. The purpose was to outmaneuver Stanley, who at this time was working for Leopold. Brazza’s specific goal was to gain possession of the territory in the region of Stanley Pool, a large natural lake on the lower Congo.
Brazza left France on his second expedition on December 27, 1879, with a small force of 11 Senegalese sailors. He rapidly worked his way up the Ogooúe and then crossed the watershed to a river, called the Olumo by local tribes, that turned out to be the Congo. Along the way Brazza asked the local chiefs to acknowledge French sovereignty. He signed a treaty with one of the most powerful chiefs, Makoko, on September 10, 1880. This accord gave France part of the right bank of the Congo and the adjacent territory. Brazza then went to the village of N’Tamo and set up a post under his Senegalese sergeant; the post would eventually grow into the city of Brazzaville, now the capital of the Congo.
From the new post Brazza traveled down the Congo and actually met Stanley at the village of Vivi near the mouth of the river on November 7, 1880. Brazza had won the race for France; when Stanley finally reached Stanley Pool, he found that the French had firmly established their authority on the west bank of the river. Brazza continued along the coast back to Libreville in Gabon, establishing supply posts and reinforcing France’s claim to the territory. In 1881, however, Brazza was abruptly recalled to France. Trying to gain diplomatically what Stanley had lost, King Leopold had convinced the French government to give all of the Congo to Belgium.
Back in France, Brazza immediately started a campaign to convince the French government and the public of the potential value of colonies along the Congo. When Brazza and Stanley exchanged insults during a dinner in Paris organized to honor Stanley, the imagination of the French people was aroused. The vacillating French government finally confirmed the treaty with Makoko in December 1882.
Brazza left on his third expedition with a large force to clearly establish French occupation of the Congo. Meanwhile, the great powers of Europe met in Berlin in November 1884 to divide up the African continent. As a result of Brazza’s activities, what is now Gabon, Congo, and the Central African Republic were awarded to France. King Leopold was given the Congo Free State, now Zaire, as his personal territory.
In 1886 Brazza was appointed governor of the new French colony, where he served for a number of years. He personally supervised and coordinated numerous expeditions that solidified French claims between the Congo River and Lake Chad, thus containing German penetration from Cameroon. During that time he tried to develop the colony without violating the rights of the Africans. Brazza, however, was hindered in his efforts by the French government, which refused to invest the money that would have allowed for orderly growth and commerce. Brazza also opposed the issuing of large land grants to private firms, a policy that was pursued by Leopold in the adjoining territory. Leopold’s holdings were ruled by private interests that made immense fortunes by exploiting the African labor force. Brazza was relieved of his position in 1898 as a result of flimsy charges made by Jean-Baptiste Marchand (see entry), a French explorer who had been sent to Africa the previous year to control the headwaters of the White Nile River.
Following Brazza’s departure the French adopted Leopold’s policy of granting concessions to large commercial companies to see if the Congo could be developed by private interests. In 1904 the situation in both the Congo Free State and the French Congo became an international scandal when enterprising journalists and public servants, such as Edmund Morel and Roger Casement, revealed that Africans were being brutalized and murdered for profit. The French government called Brazza out of retirement to investigate.
Brazza arrived in Libreville on April 29, 1905. He traveled in the colony for more than four months, encountering general hostility and deliberate noncooperation by the colonial civil service. He wrote a report attacking the conditions he found in the area. Saddened and ill with dysentery, Brazza left for France but died on the way in Dakar, Senegal (then part of French West Africa), on September 14, 1905. The French Parliament voted to suppress Brazza’s report because it was considered too damaging to the prestige of France. Had he lived longer, Brazza might have seen at least some of those abuses eliminated.
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