THE MAGREBIAN DREAM OF EUROPEAN ADVENTURERS (1/4) – François Élie Roudaire puts down his pen and looks, with great satisfaction, but also with deep apprehension, at the document he has just written. This project is a life of its own. He is not far from thinking that it is also humanity, finally from what we call the ancient world. He closes his eyes and savors the moment. At the same time, thousands of kilometers away, the success of the presentation in Port Said (Egypt) of the Suez Canal, on November 17, 1869, confirmed to him that he was in tune with scientific advances and that his idea deserved to be excavated.
This “inland sea” project has been tormenting him for several years. It was inspired by the explorations and topographic surveys they carried out in the Biskra region from 1864 onwards, during one of their first missions. Born in Saint-Cyr and at the École d'application, son of the director of the Guéret Museum of Art and Archeology in Creuse, he is destined for a scientific career in the army. He will be a geographer, geodesist and surveyor, specialties that will take him to the south of Algeria, a French colony since 1830 but still unexplored.
While carrying out topographical surveys in the Biskra region, Roudaire noticed significant saline depressions and noted that, on maps, these extend into Tunisia. He doesn't know yet, but he You have just begun a reflection that will change your life. In this mineral, the presence of salt in the landscape intrigues: the more advances in observations, the more the connection between the Chotts depression and the Lake of Triton described by Herodotus is made.
Ancient maps, including those of Ptolemy, support his reasoning as much as the writings of Ibn Shabbat, a 13th-century Arabic scholar born in Tozeur, on the banks of the Chott el-Jérid in Tunisia. Geographers, including Conrad Malte-Brun, and historians have also located the mythical Atlantis on the edge of the Atlas and believe that it would have been destroyed by an earthquake that would have dried up the “second Mediterranean” that bordered it to the south.
More recent maps and surveys carried out by Roudaire show that a series of chotts located between Algeria and Tunisia form an inland lake. From there, imagining that it would be the survival of Lake Triton and that it would be enough to create one situated with the sea on the side of Gabès, in Tunisia, to create a sea, just one step that the young officer crosses. It is up to him to develop his research to prove the prediction of this project.
Transform the desert into a fertile enclave
If Suez connects two seas together, the Roudaire project is even more ambitious, as it aims to create – or resurrect – a sea and transform the desert into lush green meadows. An ambition worthy of a 19th century, curious and eager for progress. Freemason and republican, Roudaire promotes his project through The Revue des Deux Mondes and intends to convince the man of the moment, Ferdinand de Lesseps, of the merits of flooding “a basin with a surface area equal to approximately seventeen times that of Lake Geneva through a channel that flows into the Gulf of Gabès”… Evaporation would make the climate humid and transform the desert in a fertile enclave.
The prospect of offering France new routes to Africa and the East, changing the configuration of Algeria, also constitutes a useful argument for carrying out an undertaking that promises to be colossal. Among the encouraging signs galvanizing Roudaire: the interest of scientific societies and especially that of Ferdinand de Lesseps, a diplomat and lobbyist before his time who led to the construction of the Suez Canal. Very quickly, the two men decided to work together. Roudaire of supervising the scientific and technical part, Lesseps uses his interpersonal relationship with public authorities and the Academy of Sciences.
The funds, 10,000 francs, necessary to carry out preliminary recognition and leveling studies are granted by the National Assembly. Roudaire returned to the field, carrying out a series of missions in 1874, and each time, in 1876, 1878, 1883, he made the same profound observation confirmed by the Geographical Society: the level of Chott el-Jérid east from 15 to 33 meters above the sea, and the part located between the Gulf of Gabès and the Chott, which should have been the mouth of this sea, culminates at 48 meters above the Mediterranean, making it impossible for the sea to fill a basin measuring 400 km long and 60 km wide and a useful surface of 13,000 km².
Roudaire examines all possibilities, including overcoming the altitude difference trap by modifying the location of the canal, which would be longer (240 km, compared to the planned 18) and more expensive. It relies on the force of the water masses that flow into the canal to contribute to its excavation.
The French government is tempted by the project, the cost of which was initially estimated at 73 million francs, but only to the extent that it was viable. A parallel study commissioned by the Academy of Sciences confirms the pitfalls highlighted by Roudaire, who became a professor at Saint-Cyr, but who persists in promoting his project by praising its effects on the climate, agriculture and commerce in southern Tunisia. Unfortunately, the French government no longer did so: in July 1882, it withdrew following the publication of contributions from a higher commission for the inland sea, which confirmed that the undertaking was highly dangerous.
New mission, new obstacle
The Simonian saint Ferdinand de Lesseps, however, does not want to give up what he still considers a good deal, even with higher costs. He says he is ready to carry out work in five years, up to 200 million francs, and take on the risks. In return, claim from the State part of the land that has become fertile. His detractors assured that the strong evaporation would impact the filling of the chotts and raise questions about the fate of the natives, but Lesseps persists.
In 1881, Tunisia became a protector of the French. Lesseps, who knows the country, obtains the support of the men on the ground, namely Joseph Allegro, a Tunisian general of Genoese origin, influential with the colonial authorities and the bey. In 1882, with Roudaire, he created the Society for the Study of the African Inland Sea, which financed, in 1883, a new mission to Tozeur. In the end, it turns out that the limestone nature of the terrain in some points is a prohibitive obstacle.
This time the project failed, especially since Lesseps in turn was caught up in the Panama Canal financial scandal. Questioned by the scientific community and his condition, Roudaire is exhausted. He could not stand the perseflages and died of liver disease in 1885. The Society for the Study of the African Inland Sea survived for a time, running a farm in Gabès. Last vestige of the utopia of the geographer-adventurer, who disappeared in 1892.
