Abstract
When little Louis-Gustave Binger was born in Strasbourg on October 14, 1856, he already reflected the contradictions running through France at the time: his father was Catholic and from Lorraine, while his mother was Protestant and from Alsace. His father emigrated to Paris in search of a livelihood for his family, and died there at an early age, disillusioned and destitute. Young Louis-Gustave was raised by his sister, who had married a doctor in the Lorraine town of Niederbronn. It was there, at the age of 14, that he saw the first cavalcades of officers in spiked helmets and saddles emblazoned with the "G" of Kaiser Wilhelm of Prussia. Louis-Gustave, who could only express himself well in a Proto-German dialect, saw his "Frenchness" further shaken by the defeat at Sedan. Alsace and Lorraine became German, and young Binger became an emigrant in his native land because he had opted for French nationality.
Binger enlisted in the army and zealously followed the training that would take him to the colonial regiment in Toulon. Binger's "francité" (Frenchness) is not obvious to him, but he is particularly keen to demonstrate it to everyone, everywhere. He didn't miss the first opportunity that presented itself, and found himself a non-commissioned officer in the Madeleine disciplinary camps in Dakar, where France was embarassing far from its borders a hodgepodge of "tatoués", "joyeux" and convicts to whom it hoped to give a new discipline for military campaigns in negro countries. With the "Dodds column", he took part in the subjugation of Casamance and Cayor by Damel Latt-Dior. His rapid advancement in the army and his knowledge of geography led him to take on topographical missions in Haut-Sénégal. And Binger began to dream of exploration, of becoming a hero like the Savorgnans de Brazza and the Stanleys, whose tales of adventure covered the gazettes. There was no shortage of lands to "discover". His dream would be to find the water divide between the Niger loop and the Atlantic Ocean in the Gulf of Guinea. It is said to lie on the mountains surrounding Kong, a major trading city mentioned by René Caillé in his travel diaries.
Thanks to Faidherbe, whose officer he became, Binger was able to finance his dream: he would find Kong and take advantage of the opportunity to join the French possessions in the Sahel with those in the unexplored forest, of which Grand-Bassam and Assinie are the base points on the Ivory Coast..
Binger succeeded in his mission after a journey lasting more than two years. In 1893, he was appointed as the first governor of the young colony of Côte d'Ivoire. The first capital of Côte d'Ivoire was named Bingerville. When he died on the Isle d'Adam in 1936, tribute was paid to him with the words: "Explorateur de la Boucle du Niger, a donné la Côte d'Ivoire à la France" (Explorer of the Niger Loop, gave the Ivory Coast to France).
Louis-Gustave Binger, a man whose Francophonie is shaken by his personal history and by history itself, is responsible for the invitation of a Côte d'Ivoire native to the Collège de France, by a Congolese man who gives a lecture there, thanks to the historical complicity of an Italian with a late Francophonie..
In 2015, France celebrated the centenary of an outstanding semiologist, a great thinker of its contemporary society, Roland Barthes, eminent professor at the Collège de France. Born in Cherbourg in 1915, the first stories Barthes heard were those of his grandfather, who adored him and made him dance on his lap. Roland Barthes' mother was Henriette, Henriette Binger. So I'm not the first to echo Kong de Binger's dreams in the bosom of the Collège de France..
