CHAFFANJON Jean (EN)

Biographical article

Jean Chaffanjon was born in Arnas, near Villefranche-sur-Saône, on September 8, 1854, to farming parents. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, he joined the corps of the franc-tireurs of Beaujolais. In 1873, he entered the École Normale du Rhône in Villefranche, from which he graduated in 1875.

Naturalist Training

Jean Chaffanjon began as a teacher, teaching natural sciences at the primary level. Assigned to Tarare, he remained there until 1877, when he resigned, primary education not giving him complete satisfaction (Verneau R., 1913). He continued his studies at the Faculty of Sciences of Lyon where he specialised in natural sciences. On the same date, the Entomological Society admitted him as a member, a sign of his integration into the scientific community. In 1878, Chaffanjon interrupted his studies to perform his military service, during which he was injured in Dijon. He was released from his obligations on February 7, 1879, as the eldest son of a widow. Forced to find a job to support his family (Verneau R., 1913, p. 549), he obtained a position as an assistant naturalist at the Natural History Museum in Lyon. Alongside his duties, he gave a number of public lectures on general and regional geology at the town hall of the 1st arrondissement of the city. In 1880, he was also a trainer for the anthropology course of Louis Lortet (1836-1909), dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Lyon. In April 1882, he was sent to the Lycée de Saint-Pierre de La Martinique, where he was in charge of the natural history course. From the West Indies, he regularly sent collections of shellfish and fish from the region to the Natural History Museums of Paris and Lyon.

The Discovery of the Sources of the Orinoco

Tested by the loss of several members of his family, which occurred during the yellow fever epidemic raging on the island (AN, F/17/2946/1), Jean Chaffanjon asked the Ministry of Public Instruction for an independent mission, which he obtained in May 1884. He assumed teaching duties until November (Verneau R., 1913, p. 549), then left for Venezuela to map the course of the Caura, one of the largest tributaries of the Orinoco, whose source he aimed to discover as part of another mission. Alphonse Milne-Edwards (1835-1900) and Ernest-Théodore Hamy (1842-1908) supported him in this new project. On February 6, 1886, he embarked in Bordeaux for Caracas. He enlisted the services of the young draftsman Auguste Morisot (1857-1951), a former student of the School of Fine Arts in Lyon and future husband of Berthe Morisot (1841-1895). The explorer was greeted with consideration by Joaquín Crespo (1841-1898), then President of Venezuela. The mission arrived on April 7, 1886 in Ciudad Bolívar, on the banks of the Orinoco, the real starting point of the trip. On June 10, they set sail, with the escort of sailors made available to them by the governor of Ciudad Bolívar, at the request of General Crespo. They traveled up the boisterous river and crossed many rapids. In Mapire, the sailors fled, fearing the cannibals allegedly populating the banks of the river. Illness forced Chaffanjon and his traveling companion to stop at Caicara on July 22. Their condition did not allow them to leave until August 21 in the direction of Cabruta. After reaching the city of San Fernando, the mission entered terra incognita. The amplitude of the Orinoco wasdecreasing. And on December 18, the explorer located its sources in the Serra Parima.

Upon his return he was awarded the third gold medal by the Société de géographie de Paris and the Dupleix medal by the Société de géographie commerciale. He also received a medal from the Chambre des négociants commissionnaires (Labbé P., 1913, p. 692). Venezuela also rewarded him for service rendered. He was elected on June 3, 1888 as an associate member and correspondent of the Union géographique du Nord, during the commission meeting in Laon. This mission was well noticed. It notably inspired Jules Verne (1828-1905) in his novel Le Superbe Orénoque (1898), whose main protagonist Jean de Kermor shares many similarities with Jean Chaffanjon.

A third mission ledhim to Lake Maracaibo, in the Colombian highlands, and in Venezuelan Guyana, in search of a lost civilisation. For three years, he traveled the region of Caratal and Maturin State. He passed through the cordillera of northern Venezuela, the Punta Guiria. He crossed the Andes and descended its eastern slope, near Maracaibo in Colombia. His journey ended in 1891, when he returned from the Americas.

Failed Career in Politics

Back in France, Jean Chaffanjon made known his desire to return to the colonies, "to the new regions", and thus to continue his work in geography, anthropology and ethnography, while benefiting from the amenities of an administrative post (AN, F/17/2946/2). The ministry did not respond to this request. Chaffanjon then engaged in political debate, defending republican ideas in the legislative elections of November 3, 1893, in the 2nd district of Villefranche. But his candidacy, prepared in haste, did not result in victory (Le Bon Citoyen de Tarare et du Rhône, August 14, 1898). Disappointed, he definitively renounced politics.

Crossing Central Asia

By decree of October 19, 1894, Jean Chaffanjon received authorisation from the Ministry of Public Instruction to go to Asia. His friend Gabriel Bonvalot was to take part in the trip, but on the brink of marriage, he chose to remain. He would later joinfor the excavations of Afrasiab (Uzbekistan) [Gorsenina S., 1999, p. 372]. The independent mission was financed by the Lyonnais Lucien Mangini, founder and administrator of Crédit Lyonnais, at the origin of the project. Henri Mangini, son of the patron, and Louis Gay, trained at the Versailles School of Agriculture, took part in the exploration as naturalists. The mission aimed to cross Central Asia diagonally, from the Black Sea to the Sea of ​​Japan, via Transcaspies, Turkestan, Manchuria, Mongolia, Siberia, and the maritime provinces of Amur. The aim was to study the history and geography of these regions, in particular through orographic and topographic surveys, studies of the fauna and flora and geological samples.

From Marseille, passing through Constantinople (Istanbul), the mission arrived in Batumi. Chaffanjon and his companions, wanting to avoid crossing the Urals, then took the Trans-Caspian railway. They thus descended to the Caspian Sea through the Caucasus, to Samarkand, to Russian Turkestan (current Uzbekistan), passing through Baku (current Azerbaijan). In close collaboration with the Russian government, Chaffanjon led a certain number of archaeological excavations, in particular in Merv (Mary, in Turkmenistan) and in Afrasiab. After a three-week stay in Tashkent for the preparations for the trip, the caravan was ready to leave in March 1895. From Bishkek, they made a detour to the South. The mission bypassed the Tian shan (天山) and led to the Ysyk-Köl, which they followed on its northern bank to Prjevalsk (current Karakol), named after the Russian explorer Nikolaj Mihajloviče Prževalʹskij (1839-1888), to whom they rendered homage. At the end of May, they arrived in Verniy [Almaty], the main town of Semiretchie Oblast, on the Chinese border. There, Chaffanjon met Paul Gourdet, an engineer by profession, already busy digging on the site, and with whom he studied the city's Nestorian necropolis. Leaving Almaty in early June, they crossed the Chinese Mongolian border to reach Kouldja (Yinning [伊寧], Xinjiang [新疆]). They then reached the high regions of Lake Sayram (赛里木), located 2,072 m above sea level, and descended to the swamps and Lake Ebi (艾比), 300 m above sea level. above sea level. After Lake Ulungur (烏倫古), in the extreme western part of the Gobi Desert, they entered Altai. The mission arrived in Khovd and continues to the region of the saline lakes of Uvs Nuur and Hyargas Nuur. The mission set out to explore the Ider Gol and Selenga basins. They took a new route. Passing by Lake Tsagaan Nuur, they descended back into the Orkhon Valley, in search of the ancient capital of Genghis Khan, Karakorum. After Urga [Ulan Bator], in November 1895, they chose Irkutsk as their wintering place. After a period of rest, the mission returned to the holy city of Ourga, from which began the exploration of the valley of the Kerulen (克魯倫) [Herlen Gol, in Mongolian], one of the tributaries of the Amur. In March 1896, they arrived in Qiqihar (齊齊哈爾), capital of Manchuria [current city of Heilongjiang Province (黑龍江)]. After crossing the Hinggan (興安), the journey took them in August to the Zeya Valley, where Chaffanjon studied the Aratchones tribe, and around Khabarovsk, the Goldes and Ghiliaks peoples. He discovered coal mines in the Dzhapi valley. The mission observed the August 9 eclipse and, despite the hazy sky, took "a fairly complete series of photographs of the phenomenon" (La Politique coloniale, November 24, 1896, p. 3). They finally arrived in Vladivostok via the Ussuri (烏蘇里). A final stage took them briefly to Japan, from which they embarked on a ship bound for France. The Océanien docked on December 14, 1896 at the port of Marseille. The next day, the mission was back in Paris.

The success of this mission was the result of collective work. Louis Gay and Henri Mangini were also admitted as members of the Société de géographie de Paris on December 4, 1896. At the insistence of their head of mission, they were elevated to the rank of officers of Académie (Journal officiel of January 18, 1897). On March 16, 1896, Chaffanjon received the Dupleix Medal for his work, which was awarded to him by the Société de géographie commerciale de Paris. In 1897 he won the Léon Dewey Prize, and the Société de géographie de Paris awarded him its gold medal. When the office was renewed, he was appointed secretary for the year 1897. In 1898, the Académie des sciences awarded him the Tchihatchef prize, which recognises naturalists in their exploration of the Asian continent (Le Temps, December 20, 1898).

Jean Chaffanjon gave many conferences on his trip. On February 20, 1897, he spoke to the audience of the Société de géographie de Paris. In September 1897, he participated in the 11th International Congress of Orientalists, in the Section of Ethnography and Folklore, evoking the Nestorian tombs of Bishkek, in Turkestan, in the Hailar Valley (海拉), in Manchuria (current autonomous region of Inner Mongolia). In his communications, he describes the advance of the Russians in Turkestan, emphasising the important role of the Cossacks, “soldier-labourers", "excellent settlers", "assisted moreover by the current of emigration that the government skilfully directs on the free territories” (Bulletin de la Société de géographie commerciale, 1897, p. 113). For Chaffanjon, Manchuria held potential for the future and was full of underexploited mineral wealth. He enjoieds future investors to go and see for themselves (1897b).

He conceived the project of installing a consular representative in Vladivostok, of which he informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs and for which he applied straightaway. Meeting objections,the proposal was rejected on October 9, 1897 (AN, F/17/2946/2).

The explorer obtained a new mission on March 31, 1898, with the aim of reaching Transbaikalia, the maritime provinces of Amur, Vladivostok, the Bering Strait, and a breakthrough in Korea. The naturalist was accompanied by the trainer Bohuhof, attached to the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, graduate of the Cours des voyageurs, created by Alphonse Milne-Edwards. This mission was a continuation of the previous one.

Trading in the Dutch East Indies

While Louis Gay and Henri Mangini settled in Blagovestchensk, Jean Chaffanjon later returned to his past as a merchant. His name, followed by the mention "explorer in Vladivostok", appeared on the list of advisers of foreign trade, a position newly created by the Ministry of Commerce in 1898. They were "correspondents of the office, chosen from among French industrialists and merchants established both in mainland France and in the colonies or abroad, enjoying great notoriety there in import or export business and having personally contributed to the development of foreign trade either by creating, directing, or representating houses or trading counters, either by the accomplishment of commercial missions, by publications and studies or the regular dispatch of commercial information. The functions of foreign trade adviser are free” (Le Temps, May 27, 1898).

Chaffanjon had just moved to Vladivostok, where three French trading houses were prospering. “Chaff,” as he was known in the business community, tradedin various areas of the Far East.

In 1900, he returned to France for some time, on the occasion of a conference given at the Colonial Press pavilion, at the Universal Exhibition, where he spoke about the political situation in China: this was endangered by the Boxer Rebellion, which threatened the safety of foreigners, and missionaries from Manchuria in particular (Coldre L., 1900).

From 1902, trade was made difficult. Two of Vladivostok's three trading houses were in decline. The third, directed by Jean Chaffanjon, moved to Port-Arthur. As Paul Labbée points out, "Since customs was created and Vladivostok ceased to be a free port, foreign trade received a severe blow" (Labbé P., 1902).

When the Sino-Japanese war broke out, Jean Chaffanjon, representative of the trading house Marcerou, Schréter et Cie took refuge in Harbin (哈爾), in Heilongjiang. His wife, who ran a fashion store in Port Arthur, chose to stay with her nine-year-old daughter in their house in the heart of the city, while between February and March the bombings raged. Both were engaged in Madame Stœssel's ambulances. At the end of March, in the company of her daughter, this "amazon" from Belleville, as one journalist called her (Perrinet, Le Figaro, 1904), ended up joining her husband and their two sons.

In 1911, Jean Chaffanjon was commissioned by a private company to manage rubber tree plantations (hévéa) in the Dutch Indies, on the peninsula of Malacca [now Indonesia]. The trader wishes to replicate the operation on his own account in the neighbouring island of Bintang, the main island of the Riau archipelago, southeast of Singapore. He died at the age of fifty-nine, on September 7, 1913, in Tijtlom, from an accident (Vaissier M., 2005).

The collection

The results of the mission in Asia encompassedvarious scientific fields. Of the 4,000 km route, 1,800 km were new. The mission made it possible to rectify certain points on the map. Forty-two observations were made in Manchuria and sixty-six horizon circles were drawn with the Schrader orograph. In addition to these geographical and meteorological records, the mission endeavoured to constitute collections documenting the natural history, anthropology, ethnography, and history of the populations encountered during the crossing. It is clear that the diversity of the collections is however marked by a naturalist dominance, inherent to the specialties of the three members of the mission.

Exhaustiveness as a Collection Method

Thoroughness seems the primary criterion to item collection. The results obtained are the result of collective work. However, the tasks were distributed beforehand among the participants. Henri Mangini was in charge of constituting the entomological and zoological collections, while Louis Gay, in addition to the botanical collections, took care of taking photographs.

Chaffanjon had purchased collections already constituted in America (MNHN, Ms. 2257), a practice that seems to have continued during his trip to Asia. Lucien Mangini notably bought the Borschesvky collection in Samarkand. Photographs annotated in Russian show an outside acquisition.

Archaeological Excavations in East Turkestan

At the start of the mission, Chaffanjon undertook a number of excavations in East Turkestan. He obtained permission from the Russian government to carry out excavations at Afrasiab. In addition to the abundance of old pottery, he found Greek fire bombs. He proceeded among other sites to Merv, where the mosque of Sultan Ahmad Sanjar (twelfth century) is located. He collected a certain number of ceramics and shards, from Samarkand and Bukhara, glazed earthenware and mosaics, funerary stones or amphibological rocks and terracotta ornaments. He also took with him prints from the Koranic gates of Samarkand. At the Karakorum site, the mission obtained small cones, made from the ashes of the cremated dead.

The excavation process did not meet the methodological and ethical standards of today's science. "His favorite method: dynamite", as Jean-Marie Thiébaud ironically puts it (2005, p. 145). Jean Chaffanjon amassed in this way a quantity of materials whole or in pieces, ceramics, often enamelled, glass vases and metal objects, which he sent to the musée Guimet. In Transcaspie, he assembled a numismatic collection in the field. In Almaty, where he arrived on May 26, 1896, he met Paul Gourdet, an engineer, and Nikolaï Nikolaievitch Pantoussov, attached to the government of the Oblast of Semiretchie, in charge of the excavations of the Nestorian tombs. Chaffanjon took part in the excavation work and sent skulls and tombstones found on site to the Ministry of Public Instruction (Chaffanjon J., 1899, p. 63-64). These various excavations also yielded a certain number of amphorae, lamps, vases with handles and statuettes, most of them anthropomorphic, ornate sarcophagi, and numerous pieces of debris, produced by the designated method of excavation. “The concern of this period was not to shed light on the urban structure of the ancient city and the stages of its formation, but to discover sensational works of art, confirming the existence in the region of ancient civilisations” (Gorshenina S., 1999, p. 367).

An Abundant Collection of Natural History

The mission collected a set of samples and specimens of fauna and flora, intended for the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle. The zoological collection consisted of more than 100 mammals and 500 birds, as well as fish, reptile, and insects. The botanical collection included more than 8,000 samples, made up of herbaria or seeds. Fundraising was particularly successful in Almaty. The explorer "strove to collect as many specimens as possible of each animal or plant species" (Chaffanjon J., 1897a, p. 121), also complying with the prescriptions of Alphonse Milne-Edwards (AN, F /17/2946/2). Chaffanjon organised hunts, with the help of a company of Russian hunting officers, to help him complete his collection in the Lake Baikal region (AN, F/17/2946/2). In addition to the collection carried out directly by the mission, there were also shipments from the Khabarovsk and Irkutsk museums, who graciously provided him with some specimens.

Regarding the preparation of the ichthyological collection, Chaffanjon made innovatopms: since his trip to the sources of the Orinoco, he used sodium acetate, as recommended by the naturalist Léon Louis Vaillant (1834-1914) [Duchèque, 1890].

Chaffanjon took care to label objects, noting the altitude and the place of sampling, as well as the nature of the soil. The rocks collected by the mission in Central Asia were also presented during the "Geological News" exhibition of 1897. The samples taken in China, and particularly in Sichuan (四川), received special treatment, the coals of China being highlighted.

Anthropological Collection

The anthropological collection included a number of Mongol, Buryat, Goldes, and Kurgan skulls. Of the seventeen collected in the vicinity of Urga, “three are reduced to the base, the caps having been sawn off by monks to be transformed into drinking cups. (Verneau R., 1913, p. 551).

Diversity of Ethnographic Collections

The ethnographic collections related to the Sarte, Kyrgyz, Buryat, Golde, and Mongol peoples, their habitat, their clothing, and their everyday artefacts.

The mission thus reports two types of tents: a Buryat tent and a Northern Mongol tent, in white felt, decorated with blue bands, colours reserved for the chief of the tribe, which would be exhibited at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in 1897.

A set of costumes and embroideries, dresses made of fish, seal or salmon skins, shoes, caps from the Amur regions, ornaments and jewellery (nose ornaments, found among the Goldes) make it possible to reconstruct the type of clothing worn by different members of the tribes encountered, although the idea of ​​systematic collection has not yet been confirmed. There are still objects evoking early childhood (a cradle and toys), the rider's equipment (saddles, stirrups, a coat of mail collected in Bukharia), agricultural implements (spinning wheels, mills for extracting grains of cotton, caravan bells, a plough, a harrow, a yoke), pieces of furniture (a chest of drawers, stools for nurses, wooden or birch bark boxes, carpets, a hood, a pitchfork tents), and everyday objects, especially domestic utensils (spoons, a pipe, a bark milk box from the Tangut culture, a teapot, various wooden dishes), and religious utensils (mills prayer beads, a mutton shoulder blade rosary, a Buddhist oriflamme, Buddhist objects of all kinds). Chaffanjon was able to assemble a collection of glazed terracotta figurines representing Mongolian society: the lama, a man and a woman, a young boy and a young girl, the princely procession and the team of oxen transporting tea. The crates sent to the museum thus reveal the profound diversity of the objects collected.

A Collection of Views to Document Siberian life

The mission also returned with a photographic collection of around 2,000 images. The funds of the Société de géographie de Paris present only a tiny part of it, resting on about forty glass plates, which were used for projections by the firm Molteni, solicited to offer the spectacle of these views, during conferences organised at the hotel of this company, located on boulevard Saint-Germain. These were reproductions. In his book, Michel Vaissier, grandson of Louis Gay, shows other aspects of the photographic production of the mission.

This corpus shows a few views of ruins and excavations carried out in Russian Turkestan. From the early stages of the journey, the mission offered several views of Baku and its oil wells. There is a set of views present the city of Samarkand and its outstanding monuments, such as the tomb of Tamerlane, the Madrassah of Sîr-Dâr or the mosque of Tilla Kari. The mission was also interested in the city’s bazaar, the photograph showing an overhanging opaque crowd invading the image. Numerous portraits of individuals, men and women, were presented at the museum exhibition, but only one example is in the collections of the Paris geographical society, and the group portraits attest to a desire to document through images the ethnography of the peoples encountered. The photographs follow the progress of the caravan, like a staging of the mission, and describe the succession of landscapes observed. The museum exhibition restores the extent of the collection. There are thus photographs of the market of Samarkand and Almatye and of the bazaar of Oulan Bator, as well as a basket merchant from Tiflis (Tbilisi in Georgia), an ox cart in the surroundings, a butcher's shop in Samarkand, a ox cart in Mongolia, etc. (H. Froideveaux, 1897, p. 621).

The notebooks, published by Michel Vaissier, show that Louis Gay trained and sought to reproduce the same shooting conditions, in Switzerland, at Mount Rose. While there was advance preparation, during his trip Chaffanjon receivedequipment, cameras, and photographic accessories, in particular sensitive films. The package, prepared by the Nadar workshop, sent through the French ambassador in Saint Petersburg, to Henri Mangini, by missive on October 14, 1895 (AN, F/17/2946/2) .

Of the parcels sent to the Ministry of Public Instruction, number 9 is specially addressed to Mrs. Chaffanjon. Containing the notes and the photographs, the latter responsible for putting in order and preparing the pictures for the return of the explorers (AN, F/17/2946/2). The photographs are thus considered differently, compared to the other parts of the collection.

The Exhibition of the Return and the Reception of the Collections in the Colonial Press

In August 1897, the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle presented the results of the Chaffanjon mission. Inaugurated by the Ministry of Public Instruction, the exhibition occupied the zoological galleries on the first floor. The first room was devoted to jewellery and instruments of worship and assembled collections of ancient and modern coins. Room 2 was exciting for visitors, who discovered a reconstruction of a furnished Mongolian yurt: a bread bin serving as a pantry next to the entrance; camel hair mats on which inhabitants slept; at the bottom of a Buddhist altar, with a statuette of Buddha, mirrors, cymbals, bells and vases with perfumes and offerings. The costume of a young Tangut girl from the Lake Baikal region attracted the eye of several commentators, for its bells adorning the lower abdomen, signalling the girl's virginity. There was also an enamelled vase decorated with verses from the Koran, revealed when the vase was plunged in water.

The press took over. The success was so great that the exhibition was extended until February 1897. The visit of Henry Boucher (1847-1927), Minister of Commerce, Industry, Posts and Telegraphs, marked a high point in the exhibition, which shed light on the meaning of the mission. Chaffanjon oriented his speech in such a way as to underline the advance of Russian colonisation in this region and the many outlets open to French industry and commerce. For the newspaper L'Événement, the exhibition was "of great interest both from the point of view of customs and that of the industry of the races of Eastern Siberia" (AN, F/17/2946/2). For the critics, the photographs made it possible to visualise the potentialities of this region. Le Soir pointed out that the "various scenes of agricultural life represent the Mongols to us not as a nomadic people, but as a people who have become sedentary as a result of the benefits of Russian civilisation" (October 15, 1897). "These are again commercial documents of the first order", according to the historian and geographer Henri Froideveaux (1863-1954) [1897, p. 621].

Thus, the collections initially brought together documentation providing information on the customs and types of the cultures of eastern Siberia and the northern and eastern borders of China. The mission reflected economic potential; for the commentators, the photographs and certain ethnographic pieces provide the proof. But, in 1912, Ernest-Théodore Hamy noted their disappearance (AN, F/17/17270). Similarly, the manuscript of his travelogue, the photographs and other drawings entrusted to Hachette editions were destroyed in the fire on its premises (Goršenina S., 1999, p. 381). In fact, the only objects accessible today come from his trip to the sources of the Orinoco and the photographic collections related to Central Asia are restricted to the Société de géographie de Paris (Goršenina S., 1999, p. 381).