No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Many Uses of Forgeries: The Case of Douville's Voyage au Congo
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2014
Extract
Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
A forged travel account reminds me of a raffia palm in central Africa, because there is a use for every part of such a palm: the wine (sap), the nuts (edible), the raffia (for textiles), the other leaves (for roofcovering), the branches (for furniture), its pith (for making various articles), and lastly the grubs inside the pith (also edible). Nothing is wasted. In the same way a forged travel account can be deconstructed until all its parts down to the very last sentence or proper name can be used as evidence for one or another kind of history. The considerable interest fraudulent travel accounts can have for the historian of Africa is usually far underrated because once they are exposed as forgeries they tend to be summarily dismissed and henceforth to be avoided like the plague. At most, it is conceded that sometimes part of a forged account rests on the author's observations and experiences at the time and in the place where his (the known forgers seem to have been all male) narrative placed them and may therefore actually be genuine.
The usefulness of forgeries as evidence goes well beyond this, however, and rests on two arguments. First, a narrative forgery is never totally the product of a person's imagination, if only because it strives to achieve the verisimilitude required to be passed off as genuine. A good part of any such forgery must therefore rest on valid observations made by someone, somewhere. If one can discover from where and when such elements stem, they add new evidence to the record about that where and when. Secondly, the very choice of topics and themes; raised in a forgery is historical evidence in its own right, for it tells us much about the expectations of both the social milieu in which the work was written and its intended audience at the time (not always the same social aggregates). To develop and illustrate these points, there may well be no better instance than the notorious book whose unmasking raised a great geographic furor in the earlier nineteenth century—the notorious Douville forgery.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © African Studies Association 2004
References
1 For the treatment of comparable cases see Johnson, Marion “News From Nowhere”: Duncan and “Adofoodia,” HA 1(1974), 55–66Google Scholar and Pearson, Mike Parker, “Reassessing Robert Drury's Journal as a Historical Source for Southern Madagascar,” HA 23(1996), 233–56Google Scholar. For an historical critique about travels in general see Adams, Percy G., Travelers and Travel Liars 1660-1800 (Berkeley, 1962)Google Scholar and for Africa the relevant contributions in Heintze, Beatrix and Jones, Adam, eds. “European Sources for Sub-Saharan Africa before 1900:Use and Abuse,” Paideuma 33(1987), esp. 179–206, 391–406Google Scholar.
2 [Cooley, W. D.], “Article VIII,” Foreign Quarterly Review 10(19 August 1832) 163–206Google Scholar, and rebuttal of Douville's defense, ibid., 541-46. For Cooley see Bridges, Roy, “W.D. Cooley, the RGS and African Geography in the Nineteenth Century,” Geographical Journal 142(1976), 274–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Lacordaire, Théodore “Revue de Voyages,” Revue des Deux Mondes 8(November 1832) 245–62Google Scholar, and rebuttal of a second defense by Douville, ibid., 495-500. The publication was scheduled for 15 October, but was delayed to November. Since the journal had actually published a large extract of Douville's book, preceded by a very laudatory introduction, its editor must have found the evidence convincing enough for a total U-turn.
4 The debate involved all the most influential French newspapers and periodicals of the moment.
5 Although no one knew much about the regions beyond the colony of Angola at the time, Cooley exposed the forgery by showing inconsistencies, improbabilities (e.g., too fast a rate of travel), impossibilities (some astronomical observations, orography, river flow etc.) and arguments of silence. The most telling evidence stemmed from his exposure of alternative chronologies in the text and in the astronomical tables and of a systematic error in the cartographic (and hence astronomical) data to extend the travels as far as the equator and halfway across Africa. He made it clear that Douville was ignorant of physical geography. Lacordaire pointed out that he was just as incompetent in the natural sciences.
6 R.J. da Cunha Matos, 370(Rio de Janeiro, 1963), 314. Cunha Matos arrived first in Angola in 1797, ibid., 305-06, and spent 19 years in Africa (ibid., 331), for the most part in São Tomé. Internal evidence (ibid., 21) shows that his book manuscript was completed in 1836.
7 Ibid., 309, 312, 336 and 324.
8 Ibid., successive quotes 337, 309, 312
9 Ibid., 306-07, 317, 318, 319, 320, 322, 324, 326, 328, 330, 333, 336-38, and 343-44. for other citations. For unacknowledged use of data from Douville see below.
10 And Humboldt seems to have been his explicit model according to Lacordaire, , “Revue,” 252–53Google Scholar. Indeed the very title of his book “dans l'intérieur de 1'Afrique équinoxiale” recalls the title of Humboldt's, first volume Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du nouvaux continent (Paris, 1805)Google Scholar in his thirty-volume set Voyage de Humboldt et de Bonpland (Paris, 1805–1834)Google Scholar. In Douville's time Humboldt was still the great hero of the geographical sciences in Paris, for it was the center where the scientific results gathered on his travels in South America (1799-1804) were being published.
11 Douville, Jean-Baptiste, “Aperçu de l'itinéraire de M.Douville dans le centre de l'Afrique, fait dans les annees 1828, 1829 et 1830,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris 16(1831)Google Scholar, 17 (Malawi), 20 (Tchad, Mountains of the Moon, and Nile); idem., Voyage 3:123 (the Nourihé flows to the northeast and the etymology of its name is Arabic) 129, abandoned intention to travel to Egypt). Still, he prudently withdrew his claim about Lake Malawi between June and November 1831, for it does not appear in his “Esquisse des peuples nègres au sud de l'Équateur,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie 16(1831), 200–01Google Scholar.
12 Stamm, Anne, “Jean-Baptiste Douville: Voyage au Congo (1827-1830),” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 37(1970), 5–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Miller, Joseph C., “A Note on Jean-Baptiste Douville,” Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 49 (1973), 150–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Jan Vansina, “Ambaca Society and the Slave Trade ca. 1760-1845,” forthcoming.
15 Miller, Joseph C., Way of Death (Madison 1988)Google Scholar. See maps, pages 24, 29, 36, 148, 210, 211, 216, 230-31, 258.
16 They are bundled together and published under the title “Noticias de alguns dos districtos de que se compõe est provincia,” Annaes do conselho ultramarino. Parte não official, II(1859), 81–82Google Scholar; (1860), 83-93, 123-57. Other itineraries and travel descriptions from the 1830s and early 1840s complement this body of data.
17 Douville, , Voyage 1:63Google Scholar, stated that the governor let him go into the interior in order to attempt to find the goldfields which had been known for a long time to exist somewhere in the Lombige basin and that he found them just as another person sent by the governor with the same mission arrived nearby (ibid., 299-300). Whether Douville or the unnamed “other” did, the regime of this governor is credited with the export to Lisbon of some gold from these gold fields (de Lima, José Joaquim Lopes, Ensaios, III De Angola e Benguela [Lisbon, 1846], 22, 128–29Google Scholar). On Ngombe Amuquiama, Douville's “Gomé Amuquiama,” see Voyage 1:256–74Google Scholar (including the later visit in jail).
18 Douville, , “Aperçu,” 10–11Google Scholar. The malachite mines are the mines at Bembe, north of the district of Encoge.
19 (i) Douville, , Voyage 2:225–33Google Scholar, (ii) ibid., 254-55, 15-16; (iii) conceded by Stamm, , “Jean-Baptiste Douville,” 15Google Scholar; (iv) Douville, , Voyage, 15–16Google Scholar, attributing this inversion to clerical error during the write-up of the text; v) argument of silence, but the route had been opened in the 1790s and it was to be the one by which Graça (1846) reached the Mwant Yav.
20 Stamm, “Jean-Baptiste Douville,” does not contain a single credible argument or explanation against the view that the account is a forgery, whereas that view is actually strongly supported by some of her observations, and above all by the discrepancies between Douville's preliminary lecture in 1831.
21 de Cannecatim, Bernardo Maria, Diccionario da lingua bunda ou Angolense (Lisbon, 1804)Google Scholar; idem., Collecção de observações grammaticaes sobre a lingua Bunda ou Angolense e diccionario abbreviado da lingua congueza (Lisbon, 1805). Douville's Mogialoua vocabulary was probably fabricated by slightly altering Kimbundu or Kikongo forms. The Bomba set of three dialects betrays its fake character by the prominence given to suffixes rather than prefixes (clearly Douville did not fully understand how prefixes work), by infantile devices such as endings in -z, or -x, or the use of double ff-, by the utterly unrealistic forms for his numerals one to five and the use of a system on base-five rather than the decimal system.
22 [Cooley, ], “Article VIII,” 191–94Google Scholar; Miller, “Note,” 151–52Google Scholar.
23 Lacordaire, , “Revue,” 257Google Scholar; idem., “Douville. Pièces justificatives,” 500, claimed to have seen him in Rio in March 1828. Consultation of the registers of arrival and departure from Rio de Janeiro may well provide the dates at which he really left and returned to the city.
24 Lacordaire, , “Douville. Pièces justificatives,” 496–98Google Scholar. Note that it could not be a passport delivered for his second trip since he (Voyage 2:268–69Google Scholar) said that he hid his plans for this voyage from the authorities. In his defense Douville also submitted two letters from the Governor-General addressed to him in Golungo Alto and dated 1 March and 28 April 1828, but the dates were added in another hand than the body of the text, which renders them suspicious.
25 Miller, , “Note,” 151–52Google Scholar.
26 Stamm, , “Jean-Baptiste Douville”, 36Google Scholar. Note that he himself (Douville, , Voyage, 3:225Google Scholar) claimed to have reached Rio only on 12 July 12. A crossing usually took between one and two months and the Bahia-Rio trip took twelve days' of travel plus one of rest in Bahia (ibid.).
27 Indeed, Saccardo, Graziano, Congo e Angola (3 vols.: Rome, 1982–1983), 2:504, 521, 3:298Google Scholar, dates his visit to the convent on the lower Bengo at the outset of his voyage to 1829 as a fact without further comment.
28 Douville, , Voyage 3:tables, 252, 254.Google Scholar But according to the travel account (ibid., 1:64), he left Luanda on 6 February 6 1828. Note, however, that while he falsified the year he tampered only slightly with the with the months of his dates because he felt the need to maintain the correct wet and dry seasons.
29 These include all of volume 1 (325 pages) and pp. 234-54, 256-77 of volume 2, for a total of 366 pages out of 926, or 39.5% of the whole, excluding the appendices.
30 Quite conveniently for us, Douville, , “Esquisse,” 201–04Google Scholar, summarized in a short paper all the main stereotypes of his work.
31 Vansina, “Ambaca Society.”
32 About the loss of archives see, for instance, Francina, Manoel Alves de Castro, “Itinerario de ume jornada de Loanda ao Districto de Ambaca, na provincia de Angola,” Annaes do conselho ultramarino. Pane não official, la serie 1854–1858, 1854, 7–8Google Scholar. Some losses ascertained in Ambaca in 1846 were wilful and exonerated certain local officials. Francina, , “Viagem a Cazengo pelo Quanza e regresso por terra” in the same year of Annaes, 456, 459, 461Google Scholar reports for 1847 that the archive at Muxima was not in order and contained no correspondence earlier than 1838, that the one of Massangano was not in order and contained only a portion of the expected correspondence, and that very little was written down at all in Cazengo. The lack of records in Lisbon and in ecclesiastical archives led Saccardo (note 27 above) to cite Douville about the state of the Bengo mission in 1829.
33 Thus Barbosa, João Guilherme Pereira, “Cazengo,” Annaes (May 1858), 471–72Google Scholar, dated to 20 June 1847, describes how dramatically the situation of the inhabitants there had changed in the preceding fourteen years.
34 Douville, “Aperçu” and, idem., “Esquisse.” Thus he omitted a planned travel account to Encoge after the first lecture was given.
35 Douville, , Voyage 2:374.Google Scholar Obviously all of pages 373-77 were added shortly to an older text before publication. The omission of any reference in the text to the copper mines at Bembe north of Encoge, of lake Chad, and of lake Malawi was probably the result of warnings given by friendly advisors. The location of at least these places was already well-known in Europe at that time and they did not fit in easily with Douville's travels.
36 [Cooley, ] “Douville's Travels”,” 183, 188, 195, 201–02Google Scholar.
37 On the discrepancies see ibid., 196, and Stamm, , “Jean-Baptiste Douville,” 11Google Scholar. The discrepancy indicates that he finalized his text after his maps had been handed to the cartographer while the reverse would imply that Brué was a party to the deception.
38 Douville knew about Bomba and the embassy from the Mwant Yav from the account of Bianco, João Carlos Feo Cardoso de Castello e Torres, , Memórias contendo a biographia do vice-almirante Luis da Motta Feo eTorres, a História dos govemadores e capitaes generaes de Angola desde 1575 até 1825, e a Descripção geographica e politica dos Reinos de Angola e Benguella (Paris, 1825), 300–01Google Scholar, which he cites in Voyage 1:41-42. For Bomba and “Giringbomba” see also Matos, , Compêndio, 306–08Google Scholar.
39 Dapper's 1667 map (Dapper, , Naukeurige Beschryvinge der afrikaensche Gewesten (Amsterdam, 1668)Google Scholar has Giribuma. Cf. Vossius, , Tabula (Amsterdam, 1666)Google Scholar has Giringbomba sev. Gingirbomba north of the Equator; Sulzmann, E., “Orale Tradition und Chronologie: Der Fall Baboma-Bolia (Nordwest Zaire)” in Madima, C. Faik-Nzuji and Sulzmann, Erika, eds. Mélanges de culture et de linguistiques africaines (Berlin, 1983), 526–28Google Scholar. Douville may have heard about or seen a copy of Dapper's map in Rio because “Bomba” was already present in the lecture he gave to the Societe barely a month after his return to France.
40 For Bomba in Douville, see Voyage 3:111, 122–23Google Scholar, (Kilihé, Nourihé, named Nourihé because of its scintillating sand and the “sparkling stones which fill its bed”). Cf. Nu:ri, “luminous” in Arabic), 126, and 129 (“my health made me abandon the project to return to Europe via Egypt”).
41 For instance the supposed war between Bailundo and Bihé in 1826 (Voyage, 2:117–18Google Scholar); the first or an early mention of the Muchingi or Shinje people (ibid., 324 and map); the “wandering people” north of Bihé (ibid., 170-71); the (probably erroneous) story about Bihé's origin from Humé (ibid., 153-56). Later mentions which date to the 1880s may well have been plagiarized from Douville.
42 L.C.C. Pinheiro Furtado, Carte geographica da Costa ocidental da Africa … Desenhada.… em 1790, published in Torres, Memórias. Douville, , Voyage 1:42–43Google Scholar, cited this work.
43 For instance, D'Anville, J.B., Carte particulière du royaume du Congo (Paris, 1731)Google Scholar, reproduced in Randies, W.G.L., L'ancien royaume du Congo (Paris, 1968), 108–09Google Scholar.
44 Douville, , Voyage 1:42Google Scholar for Torres (cited as Féo Cardozo). He cites those (ibid., 2:374) of “Lopez” [Pigafetta and Lopez], Battel, Merolla, and Cavazzi as well as “others” but he does not seem to have been very familiar with any of them. I suspect that the Parisian and London savants drew his attention to them.
45 E.g. Douville, , Voyage 1:16, 27, 31, 41, 302Google Scholar; 3:260. All administrative headquarters held some archives, mostly correspondence, and Douville may have been given access to a few of these papers.
46 He often quoted administrators and local dignitaries, but not traders in the genuine part of his travels. When it comes to the imagined parts of his travels (with the exception of the Dembos) all the information is supposedly given by chiefs or dignitaries, but actually it is of his own invention, or in some instances relating to Cassange and Benguela, stems from slave traders, although he is quite careful never to cite such sources.
47 I suspect that Douville obtained most of his information about the highlands and Cassange from interlocutors in Pungo Andongo who were directly involved in the trade to these destinations, as well as in Luanda. He does not seem to have talked much to traders in Ambaca, for he has little to say about Matamba, Bondo, or Holo, and most of what he does say is nonsense. Yet traders in Ambaca were very well acquainted with these regions, which they constantly visited.
48 Douville, , Voyage 2:17–18Google Scholar (Bailundo war 1826), 2:118-19 (panyaring in Bailundo), 2:142-47 (Bihe market), 2:153-56 ( history of Bihé), 2:222-23 (capture of a cannon in Haco, probably during the campaign of 1818).
49 This includes portions of the itineraries; see Stamm, , “Jean-Baptiste Douville,” 15–18Google Scholar.
50 Douville, , Voyage 2:124, 367–68Google Scholar (Muchingi), 2:351-53, parts of 2:360 (market at Cassange), 2: 350-51 (wholly invented history of the Jaga and the Regas).
51 Ibid., 2:204-06. Even so, part of the initiation proceedings is obviously wrong, but then it is precisely that part which makes it certain that Douville did not get his information directly or indirectly from Cavazzi, but either from a merchant or from the Capuchin missionary in Luanda, Ibid., 3:207-08 (the residence of the Soso chief Ambage was as far as coastal traders went inland), and 3:209 (confederation)
52 Ibid., 2:372-73, and for his supposed visit, ibid., 3:18-31. See Sebestyén, Eva and Vansina, Jan, “Angola's Eastern Hinterlands in the 1750s,” HA 26(1999), 310, 319–20, 323, 331, 343, 347Google Scholar, and Denolf, Prosper, Aan de rand der Dibese (2 vols.: Brussels, 1954), 1:691Google Scholar (elsewhere, lake Mukamba).
53 Douville, , Voyage 2:261–62Google Scholar. (baobab); ibid., 2:355-58 (Cassange's rituals).
54 Ibid., 2:219 (baobab), ibid., 2:357-58 (human sacrifice and cannibalism).
55 Matos, , Compêndio, 309Google Scholar, reproached Douville for not reporting that this information with details about Lunda's administration and polity was well-known to “even the most insignificant persons in the colony.” Douville, , Voyage 3:53–73Google Scholar, devoted an entire chapter to Tandi-a-voua and turned it into a sort of paradise on earth.
56 Douville, , Voyage 3:77–78.Google Scholar
57 Idem., “Aperçu,” 20, declared that the Abunda (Kimbundu) language was spoken wherever he traveled, which may have suggested to him that there was little risk in transposing Ambundu customs far inland. Yet in his Voyage 3:141, 155–56, 161, 266–69Google Scholar, he changed his mind and he even provided very different (forged!) vocabularies for the “Bomba” languages.
58 For the most obvious transpositions see Voyage 3:6–8Google Scholar (residence of sons, sale of sister's sons, divorce); 3:41-42 (succession); 3:63 (granaries); 3:69-71 (justice, slavery); 3:99-100 (condemnation to slavery, deposition of chiefs); 3: 126-28 (chiefly relics and procedure for election). For descriptions resulting either from wellinformed travelers or transpositions see ibid., 2:191-94 (funerary customs); 2:211-14 (chiefly funeral and election).
59 Ibid., 2:229-33 ( Zambi volcano, 3800 meters); ibid., 3:89-90 (Zambi mountain, 4600 meters)
60 Ibid., 1:12-13 (sulfur, bitumen), 194-95 and 299-300 (gold); ibid., 2:254-55 (rocksalt); ibid., 3:24 (oil, bitumen); ibid., 3:46 (lead); ibid., 3:65 (precious stones); ibid., 3:87-88 (copper); ibid., 3:94 (gold). In his “Aperçu,” 10, Douville claimed the discovery of copper in Encoge province, but in his Voyage he dropped both the trip and the claim.
61 See [Cooky], Article VIII, Voyage,” 173; There as well (ibid., 167), we hear of “pictures of … grossness, sensuality and debauchery” and about his fascination with and eloquence about cannibalism (ibid., 175-77). In “Article X: ma Défense,” 545, Cooley spoke of things “shocking to humanity.” Yet Lacordaire was apparently not shocked by any of these passages. For the general point see Curtin, Philip D., The Image of Africa (Madison, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 Douville, , Voyage 3:234Google Scholar; idem., Aperçu,” 21, 22
63 Even though it was supposedly proverbial that “three months of travel among the negroes suffice to whiten the hair and to destroy the health of a white person or a mulatto,” in Douville, , Voyage 3:250Google Scholar, as part of his appendix “Difficulties in Traveling.”
64 [Cooley, ], “Art. X- Ma Défense”, 546Google Scholar, charged him with having conducted a grand slaving expedition. Stamm, “Jean-Baptiste Douville”, suspects that he was actually fully involved in the illegal slave trade. In any case, in several places he tells us casually how he bought and sold slaves himself.
65 For a systematic exposition see his Voyage 3:234–41Google Scholar, and idem., “Aperçu,” 21-22. On scientic racism consult Curtin, , Image of Africa, 28–57Google Scholar, and index s.v. “racism”
66 Douville, , Voyage 3:24.Google Scholar
67 [Cooley, ], “Article X: Ma Défense,” 545Google Scholar.
68 Viaje al Congo y al interior del Africa equinocial verificado en los años de 1828, 29 y 30 por Douville, J.B. (Madrid, 1833)Google Scholar.
69 Matos, , Compêndio, was composed in 1836Google Scholar.
70 Magyar, Làszló, Reisen in Süd-Afrika in den Jahren 1849 bis 1857, trans. Hunfalvy, Jànos, (Pest, 1859), 381–82, and endmapGoogle Scholar.
You have
Access