The Italian-born French explorer Pierre Paul François Camille Savorgnan de Brazza (1852-1905) is regarded as the founder of French Equatorial Africa. His fame rests on the methods he employed to secure the goodwill of Africans toward France.

Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza was born in Rome on Jan. 25, 1852, the scion of an old aristocratic family. Brazza's father was an Italian patriot and a liberal who refused to live under Austrian rule in Udine in northern Italy and settled in Rome, returning to his family estate only after the Friuli region had been ceded to Piedmont in 1859.

France's role as a protector of Italian nationalism explains why young Pierre sought permission to continue his studies at the French naval academy, where he was admitted in 1868. A midshipman by the time of the Franco-Prussian War, he volunteered for service with the French navy. After the end of the war...