I have never studied science, though in the course of my reading I have picked up a great many odds and ends which have become useful. I may tell you that I am a great reader, and that I always read pencil in hand. I always carry a notebook about with me, and immediately jot down, like that person in Dickens, anything that interests me or may appear to be of possible use in my books. To give you an idea of my reading, I come here every day after lunch and immediately set to work to read through fifteen different papers, always the same fifteen, and I can tell you that very little in any of them escapes my attention. When I see anything of interest, down it goes. Then I read the reviews, such as the “Revue Bleue,” the “Revue Rose,” the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” “Cosmos,” Tissandier’s “La Nature,” Flammarion’s “L’Astronomie.” I also read through the bulletins of the scientific societies, especially those of the Geographical Society, for, mark, geography is my passion and my study. I have all Reclus’s works—I have a great admiration for Élisée Reclus—and the whole of Arago. I also read and re-read, for I am a most careful reader, the collection known as “Le Tour du Monde,” which is a series of stories of travel. I have thus amassed many thousands of notes on all subjects, and to date, at home, have at least twenty thousand notes which can be turned to advantage in my work, as yet unused.20
It is thus very likely that two reports published in 1874 immediately attracted Verne’s attention. The first appeared in the French Geographical Society’s March Bulletin (for its members) and the second—almost identical in content—was printed in May in the popular journal Revue des Deux Mondes (for the public at large). Written by Captain François-Élie Roudaire, geographer in the French army, both articles proposed “une mer intérieure en Algérie” (an inland sea in Algeria) via the construction of a two-hundred-kilometer Suez-like canal linking the Tunisian Gulf of Gabès with the eastern territories of Algeria. Such a waterway would allow the Mediterranean to fill nearly eight thousand square kilometers of semiarid desert and saltflats (the chotts), which were below sea level and assumed to have once been covered by an ancient inland sea. This artificially engineered body of water, according to Roudaire, would serve many purposes: it would bring moisture and humidity to this Saharan region, dramatically improving its climate; it would permit marine navigation as far west as Biskra (Algeria), thereby facilitating increased commerce with—and colonial influence on—the peoples of North Africa; and it would create a natural barrier against the troublesome desert Tuareg tribes of the south.
Roudaire’s proposal was the result of a geographical and geological survey he had conducted of this area during the previous year. It included specific engineering recommendations for the construction of such a canal, provided details of the various topological obstacles to be overcome, and even suggested an estimated budget (a modest twenty-five million francs). Roudaire’s daring yet pragmatic proposition was strongly supported by the famous French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, and it immediately sparked widespread interest among the French public. In July 1874, the French Academy of Sciences created a commission to study the question. In the same month, the French government unanimously approved a supplement of thirty-five thousand francs to the annual budget of the Committee of Scientific Missions (of the Ministry of Public Instruction) in order to send a military expedition, led by Roudaire, to North Africa to determine the project’s feasibility.
Over the ensuing eight years, Roudaire led several more reconnaissance missions to North Africa, and, with the political and financial backing of de Lesseps, worked tirelessly to materialize his dream of a “Sahara Sea.” But despite being promoted to major and then lieutenant colonel during this period, Roudaire’s ambitious plan was never adopted. By 1882–83, French scientists and politicians had turned against his project. The scientists cited basic geological and hydrometric errors in Roudaire’s reports (e.g., that this region had never contained an inland sea), and the politicians cited both the astronomic cost (over a billion francs) and the enormous social and political ramifications of relocating the indigenous peoples there. Exhausted, embittered, and abandoned by his erstwhile supporters—by this time, de Lesseps was embroiled in his own problems (financial and other) related to his new Panama Canal venture—Roudaire died on January 15, 1885, at age forty-eight, from a fever contracted during his final expedition.21
A sad story. But a quite noteworthy one, not only because Roudaire’s ill-fated project was the primary historical source for Verne’s novel Invasion of the Sea but also because it serves as a concrete example of Verne’s practice of documenting current events and incorporating them in his fiction.22 In fact, Verne’s first novelistic reference to Roudaire’s “Sahara Sea” was not in his 1905 novel Invasion of the Sea but, rather, in an earlier novel—Hector Servadac (1877)—a work whose composition and publication were contemporary with the French engineer’s real-life efforts. Although an interplanetary disaster narrative, the story of Hector Servadac takes place mostly in Algeria and Tunisia, and it contains a revealing passage in chapter 11 and an equally revealing footnote in chapter 13:
The reason that induced the Count and his two colleagues to persevere in their investigations towards the east was that quite recently a long-abandoned project had been revived and, by French influence, the new Sahara Sea had been created. This great achievement, which had refilled the Lake Tritonis that had borne the vessel of the Argonauts, had not only secured to France the monopoly of traffic between Europe and the Soudan, but had materially improved the climate of the country. From the gulf of Cabes [sic] in lat. 34° N., a wide channel had been opened for the purpose of giving the waters of the Mediterranean access to the vast depression which comprehended the Shotts of Kebir and of Gharsa; the isthmus existing between an indentation of the Tritonis basin and the sea having been cut asunder, so that the water had once again taken possession of the ancient bed, whence, in default of a continuous supply, it had long ago evaporated under the influence of the Libyan sun. (Chap. 11)
Map of the Proposed Saharan Sea (Duveyrier, 1875).
1.… England, astonished at the success of the Sahara Sea lately formed by Captain Roudaire, and unwilling to be outdone by France, was occupied in a great scheme for the formation of a similar sea in the centre of Australia. (Footnote in chap. 13)23
In other words, as early as 1876–77, Verne was already assuming the successful completion of this historic “Great Works” project in the not-too-distant future—nearly three decades before he would begin writing Invasion of the Sea (a narrative whose own fictional setting, incidentally, is nearly three decades into the future from its date of composition). Further, the unqualified success of this Sahara Sea, “lately formed” by the French, provided Verne with a handy means to satirize ongoing Franco-British rivalries (also extrapolated into the future), as England immediately set about constructing its own “inland sea” in its colony of Australia.
Thematic and Ideological Significance of Invasion of the Sea
Verne’s Invasion of the Sea is a novel that “closes the circle” on both the author’s life and those Voyages Extraordinaires that were by his hand alone. And it does so in a very fitting manner by returning the reader to the continent of Africa—the fictional locale of Verne’s first novel in this series, Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863). Of course, Invasion is not one of Verne’s best works, especially if compared to some of his recognized masterpieces like Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea or Around the World in Eighty Days. But it is nevertheless a fascinating one because, when viewed from a thematic and ideological standpoint, Invasion of the Sea also “closes the circle” in another important way—it marks the author’s unexpected return to the Hetzel-mandated, optimistic, and pro-science positivism that was evident throughout much of his early writing career.24
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