Jean Marie Antoine de Lanessan

Jean Marie Antoine Louis de Lanessan (13 July 1843 – 7 November 1919) was a French statesman and naturalist.

[1] Elected to the Municipal Council of Paris in 1879, de Lanessan declared in favor of communal autonomy and joined with Henri Rochefort in demanding the erection of a monument to the Communards; but after his election to the Chamber of Deputies for the 5th arrondissement of Paris in 1881 he gradually veered from the extreme Radical party to the Republican Union, and identified himself with the cause of colonial expansion.

In 1891 he was made civil and military governor of French Indochina, where his administration, which led to open rupture with Admiral Fournier, was severely criticized.

Nevertheless, he consolidated French influence in Annam and Cambodia, and secured a large accession of territory on the Mekong River from the kingdom of Siam.

[1] In the Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet of 1899 to 1902 he was Minister of Marine, and in 1901 he secured the passage of a naval programme intended to raise the French navy during the next six years to a level befitting the place of France among the great powers.