Jean Vieuchange

Who is Jean Vieuchange?

Jean Joseph Marie Vieuchange was a French adventurer and doctor, best known for preparing for publication the hand-written notebooks of his brother, Michel, describing his discovery of Smara in the Western Sahara in November 1930.

Vieuchange was born in 1906 into a comfortable middle-class family in Nevers, France, the youngest of three children. His sister, Germaine, was born in 1901 and his brother, Michel, in 1904. In 1922, the family moved to Paris, where Vieuchange enrolled as a law student at the Sorbonne; finding law tedious he transferred to medicine three years later.

During 1929 and 1930, he was involved in the planning his brother's journey to Smara and moved to Essaouira in Morocco in August 1930 with the intention of travelling with him. At the last moment, following advice from Caïd Haddou, a local tribal leader, the brothers decided that Vieuchange would stay behind ready to mount a rescue mission should Michel fall ill, be injured or be taken hostage, during the perilous journey. During his return journey from Smara, Michel fell ill with dysentery and Vieuchange rushed to meet him, arranging his evacuation by aircraft to Agadir, and hospitalisation in the little clinic within the casbah. He stayed by Michel's side, nursing him around the clock, until he died, on 30 November 1930. Before his death, Michel entrusted his seven notebooks and over two hundred photographs to Jean. Over the next eighteen months, Vieuchange prepared the notebooks for publication, with extensive editing, preparation of footnotes and a postscript. He also prepared a detailed map of Michel's route, built from the notebooks. Extracts were serialised in numerous reviews and journals, the first appearing in La Vigie marocaine on 21–27 March 1931, headlined "Voir Smara et mourir". It was finally published as a book in 1932, in Paris and New York.