Jean Marie Antoine de Lanessan

Jean Marie Antoine Louis de Lanessan, born on 13 July 1843 and died on 7 November 1919, was a French statesman and naturalist. He began as a naval medical officer, took his doctorate in 1872, and entered politics through the Paris Municipal Council in 1879, then the Chamber of Deputies in 1881, moving from the radical left toward the Republican Union and the cause of colonial expansion. After a mission to the French colonies he wrote several books on colonial questions, and in 1891 he became civil and military governor of French Indochina, where he extended French influence in Annam and Cambodia and gained territory along the Mekong from Siam before being recalled in 1894. He served as Minister of Marine in the Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet and secured a naval programme in 1901. He was also an advocate of neo-Lamarckian evolution.