Cambodia & history: Xavier Brau de Saint-Pol Lias, A travel aristocrat at the heart of Indochina

In the XIXᵉ century, when Europe was still vibrating to the rhythm of the great explorations and dreams of the Orient, one name resonated in scholarly and adventurous circles: that of Xavier Brau de Saint-Pol Lias.

Less well known to the general public than other travellers of his time, he nonetheless embodies the spirit of an era when curiosity, erudition and daring combined to discover the world

This French gentleman, from an ancient lineage in the Languedoc region, was at once a sailor, a writer, an ethnographer and a keen observer of those faraway lands that fascinated the Old Continent: Cambodia and Indochina.

Born in the middle of the XIXᵉ century, in that in-between period of romanticism and positivist reason, Xavier Brau de Saint-Pol Lias grew up in an environment steeped in culture and rigour.

The call of the sea, a thirst for the unknown and a fascination for Eastern civilisations shaped his destiny from an early age. He joined the Navy, where he distinguished himself by his ardour and intellectual curiosity. But beyond weapons, it was to books and the search for the meaning of cultures that he turned his life: exploring, understanding, bearing witness.

The call of Asia

The turning point in his life came at the end of the 1870s, when France, consolidating its influence in the Indochinese peninsula, sought to learn more about the peoples and kingdoms of South-East Asia. Saint-Pol Lias embarked on a number of journeys that took him to the far reaches of Tonkin, Laos, Cambodia and French Cochinchina.

Through his writings, in particular Le Tour du monde: voyage en Indo-Chine et dans l'Empire d'Annam et du Cambodge (1884), he gave a rare and sensitive account of a region that was still a mystery to many of his contemporaries.

What is striking about his work is the accuracy of his vision. Where many Western explorers were content with exoticism or colonial condescension, Saint-Pol Lias strives instead to understand people in their cultural intimacy. His elegant, fine writing conveys the encounter - sometimes painful, often filled with wonder - between two worlds.

Cambodia, a kingdom of stone and souls

Cambodia occupies a central place in the destiny of Saint-Pol Lias. During his travels in this largely unknown kingdom, he was dazzled by the ruins of Angkor, whose legendary shadow was only just beginning to emerge thanks to the French expeditions of Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier. Fascinated, Saint-Pol Lias visited the temples, immersing himself in the sculptures, lintels and friezes, and meticulously recording his impressions.

His accounts of the journey to Angkor bear witness to both a sincere respect for Khmer grandeur and a lucidity about the fragility of the contemporary kingdom, caught between Siamese ambitions and French influences. In his eyes, Cambodia was not simply a colonial issue: it was a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between the sacred and the everyday, an enigma to be deciphered without profaning it.

In his notebooks, he recalls Phnom Penh, then still a modest river capital, the golden pagodas glistening in the monsoon light, the markets buzzing with voices and spices. He also describes the melancholy of the Mekong, ‘this immense river, which carries the dreams and memories of peoples,’ and whose course he will follow to the borders of Laos. His words blend geographical precision and poetic lyricism, typical of the French travel prose of the XIXᵉ century, heir to Chateaubriand and forerunner of Loti.

A humanist before his time

What sets Saint-Pol Lias apart from many of his contemporaries is his quest for intelligence and human sympathy beyond frontiers. He did not travel to conquer, but to understand. His ethnographic observations, of great finesse, describe customs, arts, cares, festivals and beliefs without indulging in contempt or blind fascination. He records the faces, rituals and gestures of everyday life and strives to capture their spiritual depth.

In Cambodia at the time, still timeless, he perceived a fragile harmony that he wanted to see preserved. He admired the calm wisdom of Theravāda Buddhism, the dignity of the Khmer people, the delicacy of their arts and the beauty of the gestures used in ceremonies. In this, he differed from the triumphalist tone of many French travellers. His tone was melancholy, imbued with an acute awareness of mortal civilisations, their glory and their decline.

Between science and literature

Brau de Saint-Pol Lias was not just an explorer. He was also a witness to France's great geographical and scientific adventure. As a member of a number of learned societies and a contributor to Le Tour du Monde and the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, he helped to spread knowledge of Asia among the French public. His texts, illustrated with magnificent engravings, contribute to France's poetic and scholarly rediscovery of the Orient.

His writing has the rigour of a document and the grace of a fresco: a fluid prose, sometimes stiff but with a rare clarity. Each sentence seems to carry the echo of the sea breeze, the clatter of pagodas or the rustle of the Mekong. Saint-Pol Lias knows how to combine observation and reverie, the precision of the engineer and the sensitivity of the poet.

Legacy and posterity

While his name is no longer among the most celebrated in travel literature today, his work remains a valuable source for historians, geographers and ethnologists interested in nineteenth-century Indochina. Saint-Pol Lias's accounts offer a nuanced view of the Franco-Indochinese encounter, far removed from the ideological simplifications that would later mark colonial history.

In his writings, Cambodia is not a land ‘to be civilised’ but a world ‘to be understood’. In some respects, he foreshadows the respectful stance later taken by the great Orientalists of the XXᵉ century. His outlook was already that of a cultural mediator, seeking to bring the banks of the Mekong and the Seine into dialogue.

He died discreetly, leaving behind him a body of work that was both modest and essential. His books, sometimes forgotten, continue to circulate in the libraries of the curious, travellers and researchers exploring the history of Cambodia and French Indochina.

The beauty of a lucid witness

To re-read Xavier Brau de Saint-Pol Lias today is to rediscover the voice of a bygone era when exploration was not yet consumed by technology, when travel retained the slowness and gravity of the gaze. It is also to recognise, in this nineteenth-century sensibility, an awareness that was already modern: that of otherness, the relativity of civilisations and the fragility of worlds.

Cambodia undoubtedly offered him his greatest lesson: that of silence and mystery. Between the stones of Angkor and the slow-moving waters of the Tonle Sap, the traveller found what he was looking for - not glory, but understanding. And it is perhaps here, in this intuition of a possible dialogue between East and West, that the peaceful greatness of Saint-Pol Lias lies.

This aristocrat from Languedoc, who became a pilgrim to Indochina, combined the precision of a geographer, the grace of a writer and the fervour of a contemplative soul. His legacy remains an invitation to rediscover a forgotten art: that of seeing in order to understand, of writing in order to connect.

A French trace in the heart of Angkor

Even today, when a ray of dawn illuminates the relief of Angkor Thom or the mist of the Mekong envelops the banks of Phnom Penh, we can still imagine the discreet silhouette of Saint-Pol Lias, notebook in hand, observing the world with the noble and benevolent curiosity that was once his. He belongs to that family of spirits - the Segalens, the Lotis, the Claudels - for whom travel was a quest for beauty and truth.

He travelled the waters of the Tonle Sap, crossed the plains of Laos and the rice paddies of the Cochinese delta, leaving in his lines the imprint of an intact emotion: that of a European touched by the grandeur of a kingdom left in the silence of the forests and the splendour of the stones.

In the annals of French geography and literature, the name of Xavier Brau de Saint-Pol Lias deserves to be heard again as that of a traveller of elegance and soul, who found in Cambodia a part of his eternity.