Georges Maspero

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René Gaston Georges Maspero (born August 21, 1872 in Paris , † September 21, 1942 in Saint-Tropez ) was a French sinologist and Southeast Asian scholar and high-ranking colonial administrator ( administrateur des services civils ) in French Indochina .

He was the eldest son of the Egyptologist Gaston Maspero from his first marriage and the older half-brother of Henri (also a sinologist) and Jean Maspero (papyrologist).

Career

After the early death of his mother Harriet Henriette Yapp , Georges Maspero spent his childhood in Egypt, where his father worked as a scientist, before he attended the Lycee des Vanves and then the Lycée Henri IV as a boarding school student . He aspired to a career in colonial service in Southeast Asia; in 1891 he began his studies at the Ecole coloniale . He studied law ; At the same time, he learned Chinese and Vietnamese at the École des langues orientales, and later Khmer and Thai - Lao were to be added.

After completing his training in December 1894, he began his work as a colonial administrator at a post in Phnom Penh , the capital of Cambodia . In 1897, his superior, Résident supérieur Huyn de Verneville , with whom he was on friendly terms, was deposed through an intrigue in favor of Ducos , whereupon Maspero was assigned as administrator ( resident ) in the Kompong Spu province . Here he tried with success to build a road link to Phnom Penh.

In 1901 he became resident of Kompong Cham province , but shortly afterwards moved to Laos , which had only become a French protectorate eight years earlier. In Vientiane he worked for nine months as private secretary ( secrétaire particulier ) of the Résident supérieur Tournier and was also active in archaeological research during this time: in Vientiane he found a number of bronze inscriptions, and a few kilometers further south, in Say Fong , three steles , including one an extremely important one from the time of the Khmer Empire of Angkor , on which King Jayavarman VII announced the construction of a hospital. His discoveries made him a pioneer and co-founder of the emerging École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), where he was active from 1903 as correspondant-délégué .

Then Maspero moved to the colony of Cochinchina (today the southern third of Vietnam). Here he was first administrator of Cần Thơ from 1903–04 and then, after a stay in the French representation in Bangkok, administrator of the province of Hà Tiên . From 1905 to 1910 he was the administrator of the Biên Hòa province and distinguished himself by an extensive infrastructure construction program. In 1910 he was administrator of Sóc Trăng , where he had a canal built, then from 1912-13 from Mỹ Tho , where he founded an agricultural cooperative bank.

During his time in Cochinchina, Maspero dealt extensively with the history, art and culture of the collapsed Champa Empire. Between 1910 and 1913 he published his research results in several parts under the title “Le Royaume de Champa” - his most important scientific work from today's perspective. As early as 1914, however, his colleague Aurousseau complained that Maspero had largely neglected the Chinese sources .

In 1914, he was home on leave and therefore took as a member of the Territorial Reserve and clerk of the court of military justice at the beginning of the First World War, in part, but returned late 1915 returned to Indochina. Until July 1918 he was resident and mayor ( résident-maire ) of the port city of Haiphong , where his main focus was on preventing enemy infiltration. From 1918 to 1920 he served as interim governor of Cochinchina , representing Le Gallen . In May 1920 he finally became the interim Résident supérieur of Cambodia as representative of Baudoin . His most important achievement of this time is the initiation of a land survey (cadastre creation) by means of an airplane. He also campaigned for restoration work in Angkor, which in the end was only carried out on a stele in Ta Prohm . At the end of the year he was supposed to be officially confirmed in his position, but returned to metropolitan France, where he took over the post of Siamese commissioner in the Colonial Ministry .

In mid-1921 he switched to business and became president of Banqueindustrie de Chine , which was restructured into a Paribas subsidiary after its bankruptcy . From Paris, he was now planning to finance economic projects in China and Indochina together with the Colonial Ministry. In 1923 he was additionally administrator of the Indochinese Forestry and Match Society ( SIFA ); In the following years, further companies and interest groups should be added.

At the same time, he was extremely active scientifically and published several books, including “La Chine ” , which appeared in several editions, and in 1928 a new version of “Le Royaume de Champa” . In 1930 he became an honorary member of the EFEO, in 1936 commander of the Legion of Honor and a member of the Académie des sciences coloniales . From a scientific point of view, however, he was clearly overshadowed by his younger half-brother Henri , who, with Georges' sponsorship, also worked for EFEO in Indochina from 1908 to 1918 and then rose to become France's leading sinologist after his return to Paris.

At the beginning of the Second World War , Georges Maspero was given the management of ten companies, including the coffee and rubber syndicate. He retained this responsibility during the German occupation . The depressing situation and the constant travel between Paris and Marseilles required for his work had an extremely negative effect on his health and he suffered increasingly from breathing difficulties. Finally, it was lung cancer diagnosed, he died in September 1942 at the age of 70 years.

His daughter Éveline Porée-Maspero continued his scientific work and wrote several works on Cambodian culture and history.

Works (selection)

  • Tableau chronologique des souverains de l'Annam, 1894
  • Say-fong, une ville morte, 1903
  • L'Empire Khmèr, histoire et documents, 1904
  • Le Royaume de Champa, 1910-1913; New edition 1928
  • Grammaire de la langue khmère (Cambodia), 1915
  • La Chine, 1918; New edition 1925/26
  • La Géographie politique de l'Indochine aux environs de 960 AD, 1925
  • Un Empire colonial français, l'Indochine, 1929

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Éveline Porée-Maspero: Nécrologie: Georges Maspero (1872-1942) . In: Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient , year 1943, volume 43, pp. 155–161
  2. ↑ Léonard Aurousseau: Georges Maspero: Le Royaume de Champa [compte-rendu] . In: Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient , year 1914, Volume 14, pp. 8–43; see also: EFEO: Léonard Aurousseau
  3. ↑ Sources de l'Histoire de l'Asie et de l'Océanie dans les Archives et Bibliothèques françaises: 1. Archives , new edition 2012, pp. 540, 542
  4. ^ David Tucker: France, Brossard Mopin, and Manchukuo . In: Laura Victoir, Victor Zatsepine: Harbin to Hanoi: The Colonial Built Environment in Asia, 1840 to 1940 , Hong Kong University Press, 2013, p. 72
personal data
SURNAME Maspero, Georges
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maspero, René Gaston Georges
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French sinologist and colonial administrator in French Indochina
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH September 21, 1942
Place of death Saint Tropez