Henri Mouhot - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Henri Mouhot was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

naturalist and explorer of the mid-19th century. He was born in Montbéliard

Montbéliard

Montbéliard is a city in the Doubs department in the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. It is one of the two subprefectures of the department.-History:...

, Doubs

Doubs

Doubs is a department the Franche-Comté region of eastern France named after the Doubs River.-History:As early as the 13th century, inhabitants of the northern two-thirds of Doubs spoke the Franc-Comtois language, a dialect of Langue d'Oïl. Residents of the southern third of Doubs spoke a dialect...

, France

France

- near the Swiss border, but spent his childhood in Russia and possibly, parts of Asia. He died near Naphan, Laos

Laos

Laos Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...

. He is remembered mostly in connection to Angkor

Angkor

Angkor is a region of Cambodia that served as the seat of the Khmer Empire, which flourished from approximately the 9th to 15th centuries. The word Angkor is derived from the Sanskrit nagara , meaning "city"...

Early life

As a young professor of philology

Philology

Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

Mouhot spent at least 10 years of his life working as a language tutor in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. He traveled throughout Europe with his brother Charles, studying photographic techniques developed by Louis Daguerre

Louis Daguerre

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a French artist and physicist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography.- Biography :...

. In 1856, he began devoting himself to the study of Natural Science

Natural science

The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...

. In 1856 he married a descendant, likely the grand-daughter, of Scottish explorer Mungo Park

Mungo Park (explorer)

Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the Niger River.-Early life:...

. Upon reading "The Kingdom and People of Siam" by Sir James Bowring in 1857, Mouhot decided to travel to Indochina

Indochina

The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...

to conduct a series of botanical expeditions for the collection of new zoological specimens. His initial requests for grants and passage were rejected by French companies and the government of Napoleon III. The Royal Geographical Society and the Zoological Society of London lent him their support, and he set sail for Bangkok

Bangkok

Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...

, via Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

Expeditions

From his base in Bangkok

Bangkok

in 1858, Mouhot made 4 journeys into the interior of Siam, Cambodia

Cambodia

Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...

and Laos

Laos

. Over a period of 3 years before he died, he endured extreme hardships and fended off wild animals, to explore some previously uncharted jungle territory.

On his 1st expedition, he visited Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya (city)

Ayutthaya city is the capital of Ayutthaya province in Thailand. Located in the valley of the Chao Phraya River. The city was founded in 1350 by King U Thong, who went there to escape a smallpox outbreak in Lop Buri and proclaimed it the capital of his kingdom, often referred to as the Ayutthaya...

, the former capital of Siam (already charted territory), and gathered an extensive collection of insects, terrestrial and river shells, and sent them on to England.

In January 1860, at the end of his 2nd and longest journey, he reached Angkor

Angkor

(already charted territory) — an area spread over more than 400 km²., consisting of many sites of ancient terraces, pools, moated cities, palaces and temple

Temple

A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual activities, such as prayer and sacrifice, or analogous rites. A templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur. It has the same root as the word "template," a plan in preparation of the building that was marked out...

s, the most famous of which is Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is a temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation – first Hindu,...

. He recorded this visit in his travel journals, which included 3 weeks of detailed observations. These journals and illustrations were later incorporated into Voyage dans les royaumes de Siam, de Cambodge, de Laos which were published posthumously.

Angkor

Mouhot is often mistakenly credited with "discovering" Angkor, although Angkor was never lost — the location and existence of the entire series of Angkor sites was always known to the Khmers and had been visited by several westerners since the 16th century.
Mouhot mentions in his journals that his contemporary, Father Charles Emile Bouillevaux — a French

France

missionary based in Battambang

Battambang

Battambang is the capital city of Battambang province in northwestern Cambodia.Battambang is the second-largest city in Cambodia with a population of over 250,000. Founded in the 11th century by the Khmer Empire, Battambang is well known for being the leading rice-producing province of the country...

— had reported that he and other western explorers and missionaries had visited Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

and the other Khmer

Khmer people

Khmer people are the predominant ethnic group in Cambodia, accounting for approximately 90% of the 14.8 million people in the country. They speak the Khmer language, which is part of the larger Mon–Khmer language family found throughout Southeast Asia...

temples, at least five years before Mouhot. Father Bouillevaux published his accounts in 1857: "Travel in Indochina 1848–1846, The Annam and Cambodia".
Previously, a Portuguese trader Diogo do Couto visited Angkor and wrote his accounts about it in 1550, and the Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

monk Antonio da Magdalena

Antonio da Magdalena

António da Madalena was a Portuguese Capuchin friar who was one of the first Western visitors to Angkor. He toured the site in 1586, and in 1589 gave an account of his impressions to the historian Diogo do Couto before being killed in a shipwreck off Natal...

had also written about his visit to Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

in 1586.

Mouhot did however popularise Angkor in the West.
Perhaps none of the previous European visitors wrote as evocatively as Mouhot, who included interesting and detailed sketches.
In his posthumously published "Travels in Siam, Cambodia and Laos" Mouhot compared Angkor to the pyramids, for it was popular in the west at that time to ascribe the origin of all civilization to the Middle East. For example, he described the Buddha heads at the gateways to Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom , located in present day Cambodia, was the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer empire. It was established in the late twelfth century by king Jayavarman VII. It covers an area of 9 km², within which are located several monuments from earlier eras as well as those...

as "four immense heads in the Egyptian style," and wrote of Angkor

Angkor

"One of these temples—a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michael Angelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

—might take an honourable place beside our most beautiful buildings. It is grander than anything left to us by Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

or Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged."

Mouhot also wrote that:

"At Ongcor, there are ...ruins of such grandeur... that, at the first view, one is filled with profound admiration, and cannot but ask what has become of this powerful race, so civilized, so enlightened, the authors of these gigantic works?"

Such quotations may have given rise to the popular misconception that Mouhot had found the abandoned ruins of a lost civilisation. The Royal Geographical Society and The Zoological Society, both interested in announcing new finds, seemed to have encouraged the rumor that Mouhot — whom they had sponsored to chart mountains and rivers and catalog new species — had discovered Angkor. Mouhot himself erroneously asserted that Angkor was the work of an earlier civilization than the Khmer. For although the very same civilization which built Angkor was alive and right before his eyes, he considered them in a "state of barbarism" and could not believe they were civilized or enlightened enough to have built it. He assumed that the authors of such grandeur were a disappeared race, and mistakenly dated Angkor back over two millennia, to around the same era as Rome. The true history of Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

was later pieced together from the book "The Customs of Cambodia" written by Temur Khan's envoy Zhou Daguan

Zhou Daguan

Zhou Daguan was a Chinese diplomat under the Temür Khan, Emperor Chengzong of Yuan. He is most well known for his accounts of the customs of Cambodia and the Angkor temple complexes during his visit there. He arrived at Angkor in August 1296, and remained at the court of King Indravarman III...

to Cambodia in 1295-1296] and from stylistic and epigraphic

Epigraphy

Epigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...

evidence accumulated during the subsequent clearing and restoration work carried out across the whole Angkor

Angkor

site. It is now known that the dates of Angkor’s habitation were from the early 9th to the early 15th centuries.

Colonialism

Some have argued that Mouhot may have been a tool for French expansionism, and the annexation of territories which followed shortly after his death. Mouhot himself however, did not seem to be a hardcore colonialist, for he occasionally doubted the beneficial effects of European colonisation:

"Will the present movement of the nations of Europe towards the East result in good by introducing into these lands the blessings of our civilization? Or shall we, as blind instruments of boundless ambition, come hither as a scourge, to add to their present miseries?"

Death and legacy

Mouhot died of a malarial fever on his 4th expedition, in the jungles of Laos. He had been visiting Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang, or Louangphrabang , is a city located in north central Laos, where the Nam Khan river meets the Mekong River about north of Vientiane. It is the capital of Luang Prabang Province...

, capital of the Lan Xang

Lan Xang

The Lao kingdom of Lan Xang Hom Kao was established in 1354 by Fa Ngum.Exiled as an infant to Cambodia, Prince Fa Ngum of Xieng Dong Xieng Thong married a daughter of the Khmer king. In 1349 he set out from Angkor at the head of a 10,000-man army to establish his own country...

kingdom, one of 3 kingdoms which eventually merged into what can be known as modern day Laos

Laos

, and was under the patronage of the king. Two of his servants buried him near a French mission in Naphan, by the banks of
the Nam Khan river. Mouhot’s favourite servant, Phrai, transported all of Mouhot’s journals and specimens back to Bangkok, from where they were shipped to Europe.

A modest monument was erected over his grave in 1867, under the orders of French commander Doudart de Lagrée, who gave him this eulogy:

"We found everywhere the memory of our compatriot who, by the uprightness of his character and his natural benevolence, had acquired the regard and the affection of the natives."

The monument was destroyed by the overflow of the river Nam Khan. It was replaced in 1887 by a more durable crypt monument, and a maisonnette was built nearby to house and feed visitors to the white shrine. Some restoration work was done on the tomb in 1951 by the EFEO (Ecole Française d'Extrème Orient—The French School of the Far East).

Mouhot's tomb was consumed by the jungle and lost, until it was accidentally rediscovered in 1990. His birth town of Montbeliard in 1990 then helped with its restoration. A new plaque on one end of the crypt commemorates the rediscovery of Mouhot's burial place in 1990. The location is now known to hotels and tourist operators in Luang Prabang, and a van may be hired to take one along a dusty road to visit it. This entails a walk down a steep track to the river, along the river for about 150 metres, and then heading up a well-cleared track to the tomb.

The popularity of Angkor generated by Mouhot's writings, led to the popular support for a major French role in its study and preservation. The French carried out the majority of research work on Angkor until recently.

Borne of the posthumous misattribution to Henri Mouhot discovering Angkor, the idea that Angkor was lost and (re)discovered by Europeans lingers on, reinforced by Hollywood images of Europeans hacking through jungles to stumble upon the lost ruins of Angkor; an uninformed host of Discovery Channel's Beyond Borders program described just such a scenario of Mouhot, perpetuating the myth.

Mouhot's writings

Mouhot's travel journals are immortalized in Voyage dans les royaumes de Siam, de Cambodge, de Laos et autres parties centrales de l'Indochine (published 1863, 1864) -- English title: Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China, Cambodia and Laos During the Years 1858,1859, and 1860 (see Literature section below)

Literature

Travels in Siam, Cambodia, Laos, and Annam—Henri Mouhot, M. Mouhot—ISBN 974-8434-03-6
Travels in Siam, Cambodia and Laos, 1858-1860—Henri Mouhot, Michael Smithies - ISBN 0-19-588614-3
Illustrated by Profusely illus in b/w. - Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China (Siam), Cambodia, and Laos During the Years 1858, 1859, and 1860—Mouhot, M. Henri—ISBN 974-8495-11-6

External links

http://www.angkorwat.org/html/L2225.html [broken link]
Short biography (in French)
http://www.kh.refer.org/cbodg_ct/decouvert_kh/culture_kh/livres/mouhot.htm (in French) [broken link]
http://www.insecula.com/contact/A010818.html (in French)
http://www.angkor.com/hd.shtml [broken link]

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.