Customer Reviews

Brazza, A Life for Africa

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This biography of Pierre de Brazza gives us an inspiring portrait of a very good man in a very bad time, the age of European colonialism in Africa. Brazza, who explored and administered French Equatorial Africa at the end of the 19th century, tried desperately to civilize the colonialists' treatment of the African natives. He ultimately failed, though his ideals and efforts are inspiring. His failure shows, however, that the "heart of darkness" was not an aberration, that colonial exploitation of Africa was incurably corrupt and cruel, for the French as for the Belgians. Reading this book dispels any lingering sentimentality for this enterprise, provides the reader with a fascinating portrait of an important though (at least in the English-speaking world) largely forgotten man,
and gives us a devastating picture of nineteenth-century imperialism. "Brazza, A Life for Africa" is hard to put down.

Although Petringa's book was a nice read, obviously written with much sympathy for this remarkable explorer, I had the feeling something was missing. The book did not tell me much about the surroundings in which Brazza lived and how people reacted to his mission and, most of all, about his own motivations. We know he was one of a rare species of his time, i.e. and adventurer who considered the Africans he met as his equal. But why? Where did his idealism end and his practicalism begin? He was, after all, a man of his time. After all the slaughter, "hidden" slavery and bullying of the French in "their" Congo in the wake of Brazza's explorations, why did the African people still like this man? And as to Stanley, Petringa describes him as an outright baddie with no feeling for Africanb people and culture at all, but this is a stereotype, just as her picture of Brazza are in some ways a stereotype. Read for instance Tim Jeal's bio on Stanley and you will get a much more balanced picture.

Still, it is good to have a decent book about this man who deserves a lot more attention.

Pierre Brazza is an extremely important figure in the history of the encounter between Europe and Africa. His non-violent approach to colonialism and his belief in fair and mutual trade between Europeans and Africans was exceptional among his more rapacious and self-serving peers in the late 19th century. Maria Petringa's excellent biography Brazza is a superb account of Brazza's consistent challenge to the kind of exploitative colonialism that fast came to dominate Afro-European relations. Petringa tells the exciting story of Brazza's life with great pace and insight. She reveals his particular vision from his letters, diaries and lectures. She follows him compassionately as explorer, national celebrity, colonial administrator and human rights investigator. Finally, she accompanies him disgraced, discarded and dying in Algiers. His final report on atrocities in Congo has been suppressed and France has chosen to pursue the violent and exploitative approach to Empire. Maria Petringa has done a great service by writing such an engaging and important account of Brazza's life in English. I hope it will encourage the English speaking world to give Brazza his rightful place in history and to recover some of his ideas. Like Roger Casement - also largely forgotten until recently - Brazza saw the risks of enormous European injustice in Africa when others saw only profit.

I have lived and traveled in Africa a great deal. I recently acquired a copy of Maria Petringa's book
on Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza and thoroughly enjoyed it. What a fascinating man. This book would make a great movie and I would hope somebody in the industry would pick it up and do just that. It is a good book and I highly recommend reading it. Pat Clark

I took the book along on a short rest and relaxation trip, which was all the more enjoyable because of the time I spent on the Brazza adventure. I knew that the story of Brazza's Central Africa explorations would be interesting but Maria Petringa's excellent account of the man and his mission was engaging and a delightful reading experience.

As I enjoy reading historic accounts of charismatic figures who blaze trails, both geographically and politically, I found Maria Petringa's book highly informative and very entertaining. It is also relevant to the volatility of today's geopolitical climate.