Anne Hugon


Anne Hugon is a French historian specialising in the history of African exploration.

Career

Anne Hugon has worked for several years on the history of European exploration of Africa. She taught at the University of Lyon II and wrote a thesis on missionaries in Africa in the early 1990s.
She is currently a maître de conférences at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University where she is teaching 19th–20th century African history. She is also a member of the, a joint interdisciplinary research unit associating with the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
Her studies and research themes on Africa include colonial history of Ghana, social history, history of colonisation, history of women and gender, history of medicine and history of cultural changes. She has authored several articles and books on the subject. She wrote L'Afrique des explorateurs : Vers les sources du Nil for the “Découvertes Gallimard” collection, an illustrated pocket book published in 1991 and has been translated into ten languages, including English. The book has been adapted into a documentary film titled Le mystère des sources du Nil in 2003. A sequel to this book, Vers Tombouctou : L’Afrique des explorateurs II, released in 1994, has also been made into a documentary film with the same title.
In addition to articles and books authored by herself, Hugon has also translated the English explorer Mary Kingsley’s account of her travels into French.

L'Afrique des explorateurs is a book miniseries composed of two pocket-sized books published by Éditions Gallimard in the Invention du monde series of their Découvertes Gallimard collection, both of them made into documentary films.

L'Afrique des explorateurs : Vers les sources du Nil is the first book of this "miniseries" and the 117th title of Découvertes collection. Despite the small format, the book is distinguished by the huge number of colour illustrations taken from 19th century journals and other sources, the quality of the colour is remarkable. The body text is divided into five chapters: Ⅰ, "A World to Explore"; Ⅱ, "The Mystery of the Source of the Nile"; Ⅲ, "Livingstone's Mission in Southern Africa"; Ⅳ, "Into the Heart of the Forest"; Ⅴ, "The Explorer's Profession". The text follows the steps of those explorers in Africa: Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, James Augustus Grant, Samuel Baker, Henry Morton Stanley, David Livingstone, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, Jean-Baptiste Marchand and Mary Kingsley. In less than fifty years, in the late 19th century, they penetrated the heart of Africa, discovered the sources of the Nile, explored the Congo and Zambezi Basins, surveyed the Mountains of the Moon. But these explorers also revealed the riches of the black continent to the European colonisers. The "Documents" section at the back features excerpts from the explorers' own journals which is divided into five parts: 1, Preparing an Expedition; 2, The Explorers Confront Africa; 3, The Advent of Colonialism; 4, The Explorer's Changing Image; 5, Patrons. These are followed by a map, a chronology, further reading, list of illustrations and an index. The book has been translated into American and British English, Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, simplified and traditional Chinese.
A 52-minute documentary adaptation of the book titled Le mystère des sources du Nil, directed by Stéphane Bégoin, released in 2003 for Arte's documentary television programme The Human Adventure. It's a co-production by Arte, Arte France, Éditions Gallimard and. In an interview with Arte, the director explains the use of pictures in the documentary: "I sought to find the iconographic richness that made the success of these small books. Specifically for this film, this is reflected in the mixture of different visual sources. There are the 'vignettes' that we talked about earlier, which are photomontages made from coloured prints."

Vers Tombouctou : L'Afrique des explorateurs Ⅱ is a sequel to Vers les sources du Nil and the 216th title of Découvertes collection, published in 1994. This book concentrates on Timbuktu, an ancient city in Mali, in West Africa, a region which the previous book has nothing on it. The book is not available in other languages.
For the Europeans, Timbuktu was a mythical city in the heart of the Sahara. In 1795, Mungo Park acknowledged the Niger River. Thirty years later, René Caillié entered this "forbidden city", while Hugh Clapperton explored Lake Chad, Heinrich Barth crossed the Sahara… Travellers discovered the powerful dynasties of West Africa. Since 1850, the new explorers were mostly colonial officers with mission of conquest. On the eve of the World War I, despite African nationalism, Europeans managed to create genuine empires in Africa.
A 52-minute documentary adaptation with the same title released in 1999, directed by Jean-Claude Lubtchansky. It's a co-production by Arte, Trans Europe Film and Éditions Gallimard.

Selected publications

;Translation