Victor-Alphonse Massie

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Victor-Alphonse Massie (born April 24, 1854 in Marseille , † November 30, 1892 in southern Laos ) was a French military pharmacist and explorer of the Pavie mission in northern Indochina .

Life

Massie entered the pharmaceutical service of the French army in 1875 and began training as a pharmacist there. In the following years he was used in Perpignan and Constantine and Biskra in French Algeria . In 1885 he embarked in Marseille for Southeast Asia and took part in the final phase of the Tonkin expedition , the military subjugation of Vietnam. Subsequently, he was stationed in Langson on the border with China , meanwhile with the rank of Pharmacien-major de seconde classe .

In 1888, Massie joined Auguste Pavie's research mission . Pavie was appointed first vice-consul in Luang Prabang , Lao in 1886, rescued the king there the following year when the city was sacked by the Ho bandits and finally convinced him to ask France for protection - despite violent protests from the previous suzerain, Siam . Both France and Siam now claimed supremacy over the Kingdom of Luang Prabang . As the Franco-Siamese conflict threatened to escalate, Pavie put together a fact- finding mission with the aim of mapping and scientifically researching the Laotian Mekong region and the adjacent Tai tribal principalities in the Black River Valley (in what is now northwestern Vietnam ). He was responding to a British-Siamese surveying mission under James McCarthy , which was also in Laos.

Although Massie had probably been selected for the mission because of his medical and pharmaceutical knowledge, he developed into a versatile researcher within a short time. He worked as a geologist , paleontologist , archaeologist , botanist and linguist , among others . Together with the geologist Counillon, he first explored the northern area around Luang Prabang. Later he undertook a mission to the Tai prince Đèo Văn Trị together with the diplomat Lefèvre-Pontalis and two commercial agents and accompanied him to a meeting with the governor-general in Hanoi . His most important discoveries in these years include a number of Stone Age and Bronze Age artefacts (mainly hatchets ), various fossils and around 850 plant samples (including the holotype of the jasmine species Jasminum harmandianum ). He also wrote a Lao dictionary.

In early 1892, Pavie was also appointed French envoy in Bangkok. During his absence, Massie, with whom he was now good friends, was supposed to take over the official business in Luang Prabang as interim vice-consul.

In September 1892 the Siamese governors of Nong Khai and Khammuan on the central Mekong had several French traders arrested and deported for smuggling opium . Meanwhile, Massie, who suffered from a severe febrile illness, set off by boat south towards Saigon . However, near the Mekong Falls in the extreme south of Laos, he committed suicide for unclear reasons, possibly because of delusional delusions caused by a fever. Although there was no evidence of any third-party debt, the French colonial lobby blamed Siam. Siamese officials drove Massie to death through harassment and humiliation. For example, the French flag of his mission was defaced with a fish tail.

Despite the untrustworthy allegations, French public opinion demanded retaliation for Massie, who was now touted as a martyr of colonization. Pavie asked Siam to evacuate the east bank of the Mekong, and in March 1783 the Governor General of Indochina dispatched troops to the Mekong, marking the start of the Franco-Siamese War . A year after Massie's death, Laos was in French hands.

One of the first three gunboats to be brought to Laos during the war on a newly built pioneer railway - to bypass the Mekong Falls - was named after Massie.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Antoine Balland: Les pharmaciens militaires français , L. Fournier, Paris 1913, p. 152
  2. ^ J. Sebastien Steyer: The geological and palaeontological exploration of Laos; following in the footsteps of JBH Counillon and A. Pavie. In: Late Palaeozoic and Mesozoic Ecosystems in SE Asia (= Geological Society Special Publication 315), London 2009, pp. 25-32
  3. ^ Pavie Mission Indochina Papers, 1879–1895, Volume 1, White Lotus Press, Thailand 1999, p. 505
  4. ^ Charles Higham: The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia , Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 24
  5. ↑ Harvard University Herbaria - Index of Botanists: Massie, Victor Alphonse
  6. ↑ Jules Vidal: La végétation du Laos , Volume 1, Editions Vithagna, Vientiane 1972, p. 7 ( "Massie, attaché également à la Mission Pavie, recueillit 850 échantillons avec leur nom en caractères laotiens" )
  7. ↑ Peter and Sanda Simms: The Kingdoms of Laos , Curzon Press, Richmond 1999, p. 207
  8. ^ Thomas Crump: A Brief History of the Age of Steam , Robinson, London 2007, p. 117
personal data
SURNAME Massie, Victor-Alphonse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Massie, Victor Alphonse
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French military pharmacist and explorer in northern Indochina
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Marseille
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1892
Place of death South Laos