Émile Gentil
French colonial administrator, naval officer, and colonial military leader (1866-1914)
Émile Gentil (French pronunciation: [emil ʒɑ̃ti]; 4 April 1866 – 30 March 1914) was a French colonial administrator, naval officer, and military leader. He headed two military missions to conquer and consolidate territories north from modern Gabon to Chad. In 1902 Gentil was named commissioner-general of the French Congo residing at Brazzaville. Gabon's second-largest city Port-Gentil was named for him.
Early life and military career
Born at Volmunster in the department of Moselle, he later attended the École Navale, the school that formed French naval officers. As an ensign, he was assigned to conduct hydrographic soundings along the Gabonese coast from 1890 to 1892. That year, he joined the colonial administration in Gabon.
Missions to the African Interior
First Mission 1895–1897
In 1895, Gentil was ordered to find a practical route to Chad, claiming the area between for France, and hence thwarting German and British expansion. On 27 July 1895, Gentil headed up the Congo River on the French steamship Léon-Blot. The ship was then dismantled and hauled by African laborers through the forest to reach navigable portions of the Oubangui, where he founded the French station at Fort-Archambault near one of Sultan Rabih az-Zubayr's major towns, Kouno (now in the Chari-Baguirmi Region of Chad).
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This entry incorporates text from “Émile Gentil” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.