author
P.-L. (Parfait-Louis) Monteil
1855–1925
A French officer and explorer, he is best remembered for a remarkable journey across West Africa and the Sahara in the early 1890s. His travel writing captures both the ambition and the tensions of the colonial era in vivid, firsthand detail.
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 at Saint-Cyr and served as a French military officer in Senegal. He worked on surveying, mapping, and political missions in West Africa before undertaking the expedition that made his name.
From 1890 to 1892, he traveled east from Senegal toward Lake Chad and then north across the Sahara to Tripoli. That long overland journey brought together exploration, military observation, and geography, and later became the basis for his best-known account, De Saint-Louis à Tripoli par le lac Tchad.
Monteil died in 1925. Today he is remembered mainly for the records he left behind: books and reports that offer a detailed window into late 19th-century travel in Africa, while also reflecting the assumptions and aims of French colonial expansion.