Brazza, A Life for Africa
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Published: January 18, 2006
Place of publication: Bloomington, Indiana, USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9781425911980
Copyright date: January 18, 2006
Subjects: Biography: general; Biography: political; Political leaders & leadership; Political; Biography & Autobiography; Biography / Autobiography; Biography/Autobiography; Biography & Autobiography / Political
Description: In 1905, scandalous reports of torture in France's overseas colonies rocked Paris.  Brazza was sent to investigate.  Born an Italian nobleman, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza had spent twenty years exploring equatorial Africa as a French naval officer.  His attempts to reconcile African development and prosperity with French colonial policy had already cost him his career.  Now his commitment to expose colonial abuses would cost him his life. 
            Already divided by the anti-Semitic currents of the Dreyfus Affair, France was about to discover the reality of its administration in central Africa.  The European economy's greed for rubber had created a hidden world of slave labor and violence, with scenes that inspired the "horror" of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
            Brazza, A Life for Africa is the first English-language biography of a man who lived an extraordinary life.  Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza was a nobleman, a naval cadet, an explorer, a glamorous idol to 19th-century Parisians, a colonial governor, and a human rights investigator, as well as a husband, father, and friend.  By turns thrilling, romantic, and tragic, Brazza's story blends exotic adventures with all-too-human emotions and experiences.