Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza - Italian-born French explorer, regarded as the founder of French Equatorial Africa.
His fame rests on the methods he employed to secure the goodwill of Africans toward France.
Background
Born in 1852 in Castel Gandolfo in the Papal States, near Rome. Brazza's father was an Italian patriot and a liberal who refused to live under Austrian rule in Udine in northern Italy and settled in Rome, returning to his family estate only after the Friuli region had been ceded to Piedmont in 1859.
Education
He was sent to the Jesuit college in Paris, and in 1868 obtained authorization to enter as a foreigner the marine college at Brest.
Career
Brazza first encountered Africa in 1872, while sailing on an anti-slavery mission near Gabon. 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. He was granted French citizenship in 1874.
He discovered the Alima and Likona, but did not descend either stream.
Thence turning northwards the travellers eventually regained the coast at the end of November 1878, having left Paris in August 1875.
The French ministry, however, determined to utilize his energies in another quarter of Africa.
Their attention had been drawn to the Niger through the formation of the United African Company by Sir George Goldie (then Mr Goldie Taubman) in July 1879, Goldie's object being to secure Nigeria for Great Britain.
When on the point of sailing; from Lisbon he received a telegram cancelling these instructions, and altering his destination to the Congo.
This was a decision of great moment.
Rapidly ascending the Ogowe he founded the station of Franceville on the upper waters of that river and pushed on to the Congo at Stanley Pool, where Brazzaville was subsequently founded.
With these treaties in his possession Brazza proceeded down the Congo, and at Isangila on the 7th of November met Stanley, who was working his way up stream concluding treaties with the chiefs on behalf of the International African Association.
De Brazza spent the next eighteen months exploring the hinterland of the Gabun, and returned to France in June 1882.
This post he held until January 1898, when he was recalled.
Both as explorer and administrator his dealings with the natives were marked by consideration, kindness and patience, and he earned the title of " Father of the Slaves. "
After seven years of retirement in France de Brazza accepted, in February 1905, a mission to investigate charges of cruelty to natives brought against officials of the Congo colony.
Achievements
Connections
Brazza married Thérèse de Chambrun. 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.