The Great Crossing of Africa is the first of a series devoted to colonial history. The book features pictures from Captain Albert Baratier (1864-1917) taken during the Congo-Nil mission, initiated by Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand (1863-1934) from July 1896 to May 1899. The mission was designed to create an obstacle to the British government who was hoping to connect Cairo to Capetown.

The albums were discovered and restored recently, and are being published in their entirety by LBM publications and Ecpad. As Eric Deroo wrote in the book’s introduction “driven by the desire to capture, note, compare, class and diffuse these observations (…), Albert Baratier found the perfect support for his pictures.”

la Grande Traversée de l’Afrique, LBM Publishers, Ecpad, 2010, 288 p. relié, 500 photos. 78,95 euros