Auguste Pavie - Missions Pavie

Missions Pavie

During his various missions, Pavie managed to survey an area of 676,000 km2 (261,000 sq mi), travelling 30,000 km in the upland areas to the North and East of the Mekong, on foot, by elephant or down the river on rafts, gathering a large amount of scientific information. He was accompanied by a team of up to 40 assistants, with a wide range of expertise, from archaeology to entomology, some like diplomat-doctor Pierre Lefèvre-Fontalis and the immunologist Alexandre Yersin becoming famous in their own right. Many were trained at the École Cambodgienne in Paris, which Pavie helped found in 1885; it would later become the École Coloniale in 1889, and later still the present-day École Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer. Pavie made a special effort to ensure that the École also trained indigenous assistants, personally accompanying the first Cambodian entrants to France. The original École Coloniale was located at 2 avenue de l'Observatoire, currently the Paris office of the École nationale d'administration.

The first mission Pavie, from 1879 to 1885, covered the areas of Cambodia and Southern Siam as far as Bangkok. The second mission, from 1886 to 1889, covered Northeastern Laos and the exploration of the Black river in Tonkin as far as Hanoi. The third mission, from 1889 to 1891, involved the exploration of the Mekong river from Saigon to Luang Prabang. The fourth mission, from 1894 to 1895, involved the areas of Laos bordering with China and Burma on the left bank of the Mekong river, as far as the Red River.