Imperialisms, Revolutions, and Resolutions in the Caribbean Amazon - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 110

per left in a field of forest green. The republic had its own stamps and currency. The
Cunanians hoped to be absorbed into the French overseas system or else preferred their
complete independence. 91
A French Géographe Militant
Even more upsetting, at ideological and diplomatic levels, were the reconnaissance ex-
peditionsofHenriCoudreau(1859-99).Coudreauwasaexplorerofadecidedlyromant-
ic bent, one of the cadres of “geography militant” adventurers who engaged in general
colonial resource reconnaissance, geographical survey, basic linguistics (a kind of ex-
plorers' “Berlitz” set of travel phrases), and quick colonial anthropology. He strove to
equal the mileage and distinction of the travels of another French geographer, Jules Cre-
vaux, who eventually met his end in the Gran Chaco of Bolivia/Paraguay, eaten by Toba
Indians, at least according to other members of that expedition. 92 Coudreau traveled
widely through the eastern part of the Amazon basin (with Crevaux's guide, a local ma-
roon named Apatú) producing the usual “Travels to . . .” colonial adventure topics, a
durable genre that crammed bookshops and best-sellerlists of the latenineteenthcentury
(and still does today). Coudreau spent more time than most of such travelers among nat-
ive populations 93 and was very taken with indigenous cultures.
Impressed by Coudreau's extensive local knowledge, the governor of Guiana em-
ployed him to reconnoiter the Contestado from the Oiyapoc to the Amapazinho River.
His topics Les français en Amazonie and France equinoxiale described local natural re-
sources and regional history, less infused with French colonial triumphalism than with
descriptions of how local former slaves throughout the region had received various
Brazilian expeditions “à coups de fusil”—with rifle fire and resentment. Coudreau was
exceedinglyoptimisticabouttheprospectsforFrenchcolonialism,mostespeciallyinthe
interior grasslands, the “prairies of the Contesté,” where the “recidivists” then installed
on Devil's Island could become colonists of the interior. Rather than send these “pariahs
to what is in fact a slaughterhouse” in the lethal coastal climate, Coudreau thought that
Franceshouldtransportthemtoanagriculturalcolonyintheinterior,whichwouldsatis-
fy both humanitarian and economic needs à l'Australien . Further, “the French presence
at the mouth of the Amazon would not be without interest to La Patrie .” Coudreau's use
of the term for temperate zone grasslands, prairie , was evocative of the salubrious, suc-
cessful North American colonization of the Great Plains rather than the more accurate
tropical term savane with its overtones of the malarial grasslands of doom and pestilent
mangroves of the coast. Coudreau helpfully proposed that immigration companies then
moving millions from Europe to North America and southern Brazil might be hired to
assist in transporting new colonials to the (expanding) French Amazon. 94