Edgar Boulangier

French civil engineer, indefatigable traveler and compulsive big-game hunter Marie Auguste Edgar Boulangier (1850−1899) visited Cambodia in 1880 – 1881, his first official mission for which he was granted logistical support by King Norodom. This ​‘mineralogical-hydrological’ exploration was supposed to evaluate Cambodia’s natural resources after the establishment of the French Protectorate (ប្រទេសកម្ពុជាក្រោមអាណានិគមបារាំង) in 1863.

An ingénieur des Ponts-et-Chaussées, he published his first book in 1887, a travelogue entitled Chasses au tigre et à l’éléphant: Un hiver au Cambodge (Tours, France, 2^d edition 1888) in which he stressed the potential for iron ore and gold extraction, intensive agriculture and commercial exchanges in Cambodia, and offered a rare description of Angkor.

After Indo-China, Boulangier was sent to Subsaharian Africa, Central Asia and Siberia, mostly to study railway transportation and infrastructure development.

“Entering the channels of Tonle Sap Lake”, illustration in Un hiver au Cambodge, 2^d ed., 1888.

Publications

• “Communication à la Société géographique de Paris sur son voyage au Cambodge”, Revue L’Exploration, II, 1881.
• “Le lac du Cambodge”, Revue scientifique, 26 fév. 1881, [compte-rendu] Bulletin Société maritime et coloniale, mars 1881.
• “Les mines de fer de Compong Soai au Cambodge”, Excursions et Reconnaissances n° 10, 1881, 7p.
• “Chasses au Cambodge”, Gazette des Bains de mer de Royan, juillet-août 1881.
• “Correspondance avec Aymonier”, Journal officiel de la Cochinchine, 1881.
• Le débit du Mékhong, Saigon, in 8.
• “La colonisation de l’Indochine”, Revue maritime et coloniale, 1885.
• Un hiver au Cambodge: chasse au tigre, à l’éléphant et au buffle sauvage. Souvenirs d’une mission officielle en 1880 – 1881, Paris, 1887; augmented edition, Tours, Alfred Mame & Fils, 1888, 400 p. with illustrations; repr. Paris, Mercure de France, 2020, 464 p.