Un pèlerin d’Angkor

In 1901, when Pierre Loti visited Angkor, he fulfilled one of his oldest dreams. That dream dated back to his childhood: his elder brother Gustave, a naval doctor who died in Saigon in 1865, had brought back objects, notes and accounts from Indochina that had lastingly struck the future writer’s imagination. For Loti, seeing Angkor was thus not merely the discovery of a legendary site but the fulfillment of an old promise, accomplished during an official mission to the Far East.

At that date, Cambodia had been under French protectorate since 1863, and Angkor was gradually becoming an object of study, restoration, prestige and projection for the colonial administration and French scholars. The École française d’Extrême-Orient was then beginning to play a decisive role in the conservation and promotion of the site. Un pèlerin d’Angkor is at once a document of the Western encounter with the Khmer ruins, a milestone in the literary history of Angkor, and one of Loti’s last great travel books.

A copy with an interesting dedicatee: his junior from the École Navale and friend, Maurice de Lacoste. Born in Metz in 1864, Lacoste entered the naval academy in 1882, fifteen years after Loti. Appointed first-class midshipman in October 1885, he was first posted to the Far East naval division. It was during these early voyages that he met Pierre Loti, who had been sailing those seas since the same year aboard the Mytho, one of the eleven official transport ships of the naval forces in the Far East. Promoted lieutenant in October 1893, he was successively assigned to several battleships and then cruisers, the spearheads of the Navy and the most powerful warships of the time. He was later assigned to the central directorate of naval artillery, then became a frigate captain before being posted to the general staff in 1909.