Book. It is an icing text and with the important role in the historical understanding of colonialism that have chosen to publish in pocket the editions of the clandestine passenger (384 pages, 14 euros), more than ten years after the first publication, in 2014, of Brazza report. In March 1905, the French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza embarked for the Congo under French protectorate in order to investigate a case that shakes French public opinion, the cruel death of a prisoner killed by a colonial official using a dynamite cartridge.
Brazza is not only chosen for his knowledge of the territory. This former general commissioner of the French Congo is deemed to be humanist, open to dialogue with the colonized populations. The government wishes to show with this inspection that the abuses committed remain exceptional, in order to mark the difference of the French administration with that of the neighboring territory, placed under Belgian responsibility.
The mission entrusted to the former explorer from March to August 1905 will reveal the opposite. His notes bear witness to systemic violence, perpetrated not only by the private companies to which the French State has granted the right to exploit the resources, but also by the civil servants themselves, under the responsibility of the Ministry of the Colonies.
Colonization allegedly civilizing
The charge is severe against the French State and the concessionaire regime, set up to limit public investment. The mission thus discovers the organization of hostages in order to oblige the populations to pay the tax in kind claimed by the administration. In Bangui, 45 women died of hunger in 1904 when they were locked up at more than 60 in a 6 -meter -long box to force their husbands to provide part of their rubber harvest. In another region, 119 “Women and girls” are removed for the same reasons, before being released on Brazza intervention.
You have 36.18% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.