An ongoing exhibition at NYU’s Casa Italiana introduces American audiences to a new Romantic hero, the Italian explorer and conquerer Pietro di Brazza. In three small but fascinating rooms of photographs, maps and drawings, the exhibit lays out the argument that Africa would have been better off with more of the kinder, gentler colonialism of Pietro di Brazza, and less of the harsh colonialism of Henry Stanley, the Anglo-American explorer in the service of the notorious most ruthless imperialist ever, King Leopold of Belgium.
Pietro Savorgnan di Brazza, photographed by Felix Nadar in Paris, around 1882
Born in Rome and educated in France, Pietro di Brazza joined the French Navy at the age of 18. His early expeditions, up the Ogoué river (now in Gabon) and across the Batéké plain (now part of Congo-Brazzaville), laid the groundwork for the French colonial empire in Equatorial Africa.
On his expeditions, he carried with him French flags and bestowed them on tribal leaders as symbols of protection against other predatory colonial powers. He signed a treaty of friendship with the leader of the powerful Batéké tribe, Makoko Iloo I, which would eventually cede much of what is now Congo-Brazzaville to French control. As a reward for his successful explorations, France made Brazza the Commissioner General of French West Africa, where he governed for 15 years.
Examining the allegiances, writings and portraits of the two explorers, the exhibit draws a studied contrast between the humanist ideals of Brazza, who opposed slavery and fought to prevent France from granting concessions to commercial merchants in Africa, and the mercenary tactics of Henry Stanley, whose exploration of Lake Victoria and the Congo River led the way for King Leopold to establish an empire of unprecedented brutality and exploitation in what is now the DRC.
Brazza was a man ahead of his time, the curators contend, who understood the need for sustainable development, and treated the natives with tolerance and respect. “I believe that the future of Western Africa and the Congo basin depends on the rich indigenous culture and trade—not on colonization through European immigration,” he said in a speech to his admirers in Paris.
Still, the exhibit left us wondering: Do we really need a colonialist hero? Is the world short on idealized portraits of rugged white men in native gear, posing against romantic backdrops of sand and mountains? For all Brazza’s noble ideals, should we pass lightly over the fact that he was in fact the colonial governor of French Congo and Gabon? That his “gift” of Congo and Gabon to the Republic of France opened the door to decades of war and commercial exploitation? That his presence in the Congo robbed its inhabitants of their right to self-rule?
After all, Brazza could not control the massive tide of history that his explorations and his friendship treaty with the Batéké leader set in motion. He himself fell out of favor with the French government, was dismissed from his post, and died in Algiers a disillusioned man. His last report, decrying the abuses of power in the French West Africa that followed from evidence of Leopold’s enormous profits in the rubber trade, was suppressed and has still never been released.
Brazza may have truly believed that the French flags he gave to the tribal chiefs were peaceful offerings of protection, symbols of liberté, egalité, and fraternité. But from our vantage point today it’s hard to see them other than as the symbols of colonial domination that, in very real, enduring terms, they were.
True, some colonial empires were better than others. Some colonial rulers were more benevolent than others. But colonialism, stripped of all its “White Man’s Burden” justifications, is at its core a kind of violence. And any historian who ignores this is engaged in hagiography, not history.
You can still catch “Brazza in Congo: A Life and Legacy” which runs through April 17 at NYU’s Casa Italiana. You can also see a mural created by the Brazzaville artists from the Poto-Poto School of Painting to commemorate the meeting between Brazza and Makoko Iloo I, at the National Arts Club.
8 Comments
If you’ve not seen Dinesh D’Souza’s “Two cheers for colonialism”, you should; he’s writing as an Indian about British colonialism, which brought to India Western ideals of which D’Souza approves — along, of course, with the oppression and occasional brutality.
I did an internship i Brazza for 5 months in 2006 and at that time the govenment started to build a huge statue in the memory of De Brazza. I believe it is now finished and I my far-fetched guess is that the majority of the Congolese population rather would have liked to see the money spent on education and health than on celebrating “colonial heros”. Btw, I’m glad that R Congo is highlighted, the country in general, and the dictator/president Sassou is too seldom scrutinized. Another interesting detail is that the wife (well, she died a month ago) of the president of Gabon, Omar Bongo is/was the daughter of Sassou. Realpolitik of the middle ages?
Very interesting post. Though I enjoy Professor Easterly’s opinions and think it’s important to have someone to counterbalance the shrill voices of the Sachs movement, I think diversity of content, perspective and style could keep this blog fresh – and make it more appealing to a broader audience.
Sometimes when we talk about countries we easily forget the peoples individually. Just think at individual level to see if you can think of a benevolent home invader. Someone who will come to your home and impose new rules and choose new priorities for you even if he is doing so in good faith to help you.
In a similar note, the French president tried to impose historian to teach the positive impact of colonization. Well, I was thought in high school that WWII played a big role in the movement of decolonization in Africa. WWII has also helped the US economy then a lot. But are these good reasons to have maybe another one? This relate also to idea of Sen which indirectly celebrates the Moist regime.
I think some people might say he was simply the lesser of two evils. If he didn’t colonize them, perhaps a worse colonizer would have been there. In this sense, it makes him the ‘good colonialist’ as you ask.
King Leopold seems clearly the worst colonial ruler. What post-colonialist regime do you think was the biggest improvement on its predecessor (don’t forget that the Congo improved when it passed from Leopold personally to the Belgian government)? I think Singapore is hands-down the best post-colonial regime, but I don’t know much about how it was before independence.
If the exhibition paints an overly rosy picture of Brazza as being progressive for his time and context, does judging him merely on the merits and evils of colonialism really help us understand anything any better? Which 19th century Europeans should we single out for making a positive difference, given that none of them had anything close to the understanding of race and power that we have today? If it were the history of scientific thought, would we withhold praise from Galileo because he thought that the oceans’ tides were caused by the spin of the earth?
If an individual’s historical contribution is so defined by the times and institutions they were a part of, what will future historians make of good people that tried to do the right thing but worked within such neocolonial institutions as the World Bank?
Brazza did not die in Algiers. There is a grave lack of reliable info on Brazza in English, now remedied by an excellent book. For readers seeking the facts,
BRAZZA, A LIFE FOR AFRICA (2006) by Maria PETRINGA is the first complete biography of the humanitarian explorer P. S. di Brazza in English.
Author Petringa researched the book in France, Italy, and Congo-Brazzaville, where she lived for several years. Her lively, fascinating look at Brazza’s life contains numerous parallels to today’s events, including a 1904 torture scandal in Africa that is eerily similar to the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2004.
BRAZZA, A LIFE FOR AFRICA is is a National Sons of Italy Book Club Selection, and a Nominee for the French Colonial Historical Society’s Heggoy Book Prize, and is available on all book websites.