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Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza photographed by Félix Nadar.

Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazza, best known as Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza (January 26, 1852 - September 14, 1905) was a Franco-Italian explorer, born in Italy and later naturalized French. With the backing of the Société de Géographique de Paris, he opened up for France entry along the right bank of the Congo that eventually led to French colonies in Central Africa. His easy manner and great physical charm, as well as his pacific approach among Africans, were his trademarks. Under French colonial rule, Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo was named in his honor.

Drawing of de Brazza (23 February 1895).

Born in Rome on January 26, 1852, Pietro Savorgnan di Brazza was the seventh son of Count Ascanio Savorgnan di Brazzà, a nobleman of Udine with many French connections. Pietro was interested in exploration from an early age and won entry to the French naval school at Brest, graduated as an ensign, and went on the French ship Jeanne d'Arc to Algeria,

His next ship was the Venus, which stopped at Gabon regularly, and in 1874, de Brazza made two trips, up the Gabon River and Ogoue River. He then proposed to the government that he explore the Ogoue to its source, and with the help of friends in high places, including Jules Ferry and Leon Gambetta, he secured partial funding, the rest coming out of his own pocket. He also became a naturalized French citizen at this time, adopting the French spelling of his name.

In this expedition, which lasted from 1875-1878, armed with cotton textiles and tools to use for barter, accompanied by Noel Ballay, a doctor, Alfred Marche, a naturalist, a sailor, thirteen Senegalese laptots and four local interpreters, Brazza charmed and talked his way deep inland.

The French authorized a second mission, 1879-1882. Reaching the Congo River in 1880, Brazza proposed to King Makoko of the Batekes that he place his kingdom under the protection of the French flag. Makoko, interested in trade possibilities and in gaining an edge over his rivals, signed a treaty. Makoko also arranged for the establishment of a French settlement at Mfoa on the Congo's Malebo Pool, a place later known as Brazzaville; after Brazza's departure, the outpost was manned by two laptots under the command of Senegalese Sergeant Malamine Camara, whose resourcefulness had impressed Brazza during their several months trekking inland from the coast.

In 1886, Brazza was named governor-general of the French Congo. Journalists' reports of the contrast between the decent wages and humane conditions there contrasted with the personal regime of Belgian King Léopold on the opposite bank, in the Congo Free State, made him some important enemies, and a mounting smear campaign in the French press led to his dismissal in 1898. By 1905, he was asked to look into the colonial conditions, which had deteriorated during his absence, but the National Assembly voted to suppress his embarrassing report, a copy of which was found amongst his personal effects after his death. He died suddenly of a fever at Dakar. There were rumors that he had been poisoned.

The epitaph for his burial site in Algiers reads, "une mémoire pure de sang humain" ("a memory untainted by human blood").

A mausoleum has been built in his honour in Brazzaville. On 30 September 2006, his remains were exhumed in Algiers^[1] to be reinterred in Brazzaville on 3 October, along with those of his wife and four children.^[2]

The decision to honor Pierre de Brazza as a founding father of the Republic of the Congo has elicited protests among many Congolese. Mwinda Press, the journal of the Association of Congolese Democrats in France wrote articles quoting Théophile Obenga who depicted Pierre de Brazza as a colonizer and not a humanist, declaring him to have raped a Congolese woman, a princess and the equivalent of a Vestal Virgin, and to have pillaged villages, raising highly charged questions as to why the colonizer should be revered as a national hero instead of the Congolese who fought against colonization.

• Maria Petringa, Brazza, A Life for Africa (2006) ISBN 9781-4259-11980
• Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (1991)
• Richard West, Brazza of the Congo (1972)
• Théophile Obenga - The rape by De Brazza, http://www.mwinda.org/article/obenga.html
• The Mausoleum of Shame - http://www.mwinda.org/article/honte.html
• De Brazza - A Congolese Point of View, http://www.mwinda.org/article/honte1.html

• From Our Correspondent: Final return to Congo, BBC News, 23 September 2006
• A site dedicated to Brazza's life and times (in French or Italian)
• Fondation Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (in French)
• Maria Petringa's 1997 "Brief Life of a Lover of Africa"