author
P.-L. (Parfait-Louis) Monteil
1855–1925
A French officer and explorer, he is best remembered for a demanding journey across West Africa and the Sahara in the early 1890s. His travels and reports captured a moment when European colonial ambitions and African political worlds were colliding.
1 Audiobook
De Saint-Louis à Tripoli par le Lac Tchad : Voyage au travers du Soudan et du Sahara
by P.-L. (Parfait-Louis) Monteil
About the author
Born in Paris in 1855, Parfait-Louis Monteil trained as a military officer at Saint-Cyr and later served in Senegal and in French Indochina. He became known not only as a soldier but also as a careful observer, taking an interest in mapping, transport routes, and the geography of the regions where he worked.
Between 1890 and 1892, he carried out the journey that made his name: traveling from Senegal eastward to Lake Chad and then north across the Sahara to Tripoli. The expedition was widely noted for its scale and difficulty, and Monteil later published accounts that helped shape how French readers understood West and Central Africa at the end of the nineteenth century.
He died in 1925. Today, he is remembered as part of the era of French exploration and colonial expansion—an adventurous figure, but also one tied closely to the ambitions and power politics of that period.