His father, Ascanio Savorgnan di Brazzà, was a nobleman and well known artist, from a family with ancient Friulian origins and many French connections.

From an early age, Pietro was interested in exploration, particularly in West Africa, and he won entry to the French naval school Academy of Borda at Brest.

In 1870, he graduated and sailed aboard the French ironclad Jeanne d'Arc to Algeria, where he witnessed the bloody suppression of the Mokrani Revolt.

With the help of friends in high places, including Jules Ferry and Leon Gambetta, he secured partial funding, the rest coming from his own pocket.

[2] In this expedition, which lasted from 1875 to 1878, 'armed' only with cotton textiles and tools to use for barter, and accompanied by a medical doctor, Noel Ballay, a naturalist, Alfred Marche, his assistant, Victor Hamon, twelve Senegalese laptots, four Gabonese interpreters and his cook, Chico, the explorer made his way deep inland where no other European had ventured because of the river dwellers' resistance.

King Makoko, aware of Stanley's advance and interested in trade possibilities and gaining an edge over his rivals, signed the treaty.

The press dubbed him "le conquérant pacifique", the peaceful conqueror, for his success in ensuring French imperial expansion without waging war.

On the return voyage to France, when the ship docked in Dakar, a major port, he was brought to the hospital where he died at the age of 53, with his wife Thérèse at his side.

Thérèse, who always maintained that her husband had been poisoned by the colonial authorities, refused the honour of burial in the Pantheon and buried him temporarily at the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris.

[21] The epitaph on his burial site in Algiers reads: "Une mémoire pure de sang humain" ("a memory untainted by human blood").

[citation needed] In February 2005, presidents Nguesso of Congo, Ondimba of Gabon and Chirac of France gathered at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone for a memorial to Brazza, a mausoleum of Italian marble.

Mwinda Press, the journal of the Association of Congolese Democrats in France, published articles quoting Théophile Obenga who depicted Brazza as a coloniser and not a humanist.