Dante n'avait rien vu.

by Albert Londres

Le succès de son enquête sur le bagne de Cayenne (Au bagne) pousse Albert Londres à s’intéresser à d’autres bagnes, militaires cette fois, situés en Afrique du Nord et dépendant du ministère de la Guerre. Malgré l’hostilité de la hiérarchie militaire, il sillonne donc le Rif et recueille les doléances inimaginables des soldats bagnards.Sous la forme de dix-neuf articles, son reportage est publié sous le titre Biribi au printemps 1924. Au cours de l’été, sous la pression de l’opinion publique, le ministre de la Guerre doit envoyer sur place une commission d’enquête, et c’est grâce à Albert Londres et à son reportage que les bagnes militaires, avec leurs odieux « travaux publics », seront bientôt supprimés en France.

184 pages, Pocket Book

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Albert Londres was a French journalist and writer. One of the inventors of investigative journalism, he criticized abuses of colonialism such as forced labour. Albert Londres gave his name to a journalism prize for Francophone journalists.

Reviews

[Meike]

Londres was one of the first investigative journalists, the most important journalism prize of the Grande Nation is still called the Albert Londres Prize. This text is considered a classic of anticolonialist literature, BUT: Londres did not argue against colonialism as a whole. Rather, he wanted a better colonialism: Like many of his contemporaries, he saw the colonies as a civilizing mission. He wasn't upset that the land and the people were exploited, but how they were exploited.

Here, Londres writes about the workings of a penal colony in Northern Africa where abitrary justice, violence, and torture rule. It abides to a smiliar cruel non-logic like Kafka's In the Penal Colony (Kafka was already dead when Londres' piece was published though).

Londres writes against inhumanity and pointless cruelty, he wants a humane colonialism (which doesn't exist, but let's follow his logic for the sake of investigating his time and colonial thinking). He was severely attacked in France, sued, called a traitor to France. But the documentary character of his writing and the facts he reported, especially the numbers, forced officials to act: The French colonial minister had to answer question regarding the "systematic murder of Black people" in the context of the Congo-Ocean railway, for example.

And then there's today's treatment of colonial history: In 2005, President Sarkozy wanted to implement a law demanding to include the positive aspects of colonialism in school textbooks - he failed. And what did I, a German, learn about German colonialism (which included a genocide in Namibia) in my German high school? Nothing. What about you?

You have to praise all publishers who provide the public with Londres' works, because they are instructive historical documents.