Invasion of the Sea
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| Author | Jules Verne |
|---|---|
| Original title | L'Invasion de la mer |
| Translator | Edward Baxter |
| Illustrator | Léon Benett |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Series | The Extraordinary Voyages No. 54 |
| Genre | Adventure novel |
| Publisher | Pierre-Jules Hetzel |
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Publication date
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1905 |
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Published in English
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2001 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Preceded by | Master of the World |
Invasion of the Sea (French: L'Invasion de la mer) is an adventure novel written by Jules Verne. It was published in 1905, the last to be published in the author's lifetime, and describes the exploits of Berber nomads and European travelers in Saharan Africa. The European characters arrive to study the feasibility of flooding a low-lying region of the Sahara desert to create an inland sea and open up the interior of Northern Africa to trade. In the end, however, the protagonists' pride in humanity's potential to control and reshape the world is humbled by a cataclysmic earthquake which results in the natural formation of just such a sea.
Invasion of the Sea takes place in a future 1930s and follows the story of European engineers and their military escort who seek to revive an actual 19th century proposal to flood the Sahara desert with waters from the Mediterranean Sea to create an inland "Sahara Sea" for both commercial and military purposes. The French military escort, led by Captain Hardigan, meet with conflict from Tuareg Berber tribes who fear the new sea will threaten their nomadic way of life. The Berber tribes, led by the warlord Hadjar, begin an insurgency campaign against the Europeans in an effort to derail their plans for the inland sea. Captain Hardigan attempts to retaliate against the Berbers and bring Hadjar to justice. Ultimately, however, a disastrous earthquake strikes. This earthquake floods the Sahara to an extent beyond even limits which were proposed by the Europeans.
The novel Invasion of the Sea, as well the plans of the characters in the novel, are inspired by the real life exploits of Captain François Élie Roudaire. Roudaire was a French military officer and geographer who surveyed parts of Tunisia in the late 1800s. He discovered that large areas of the Sahara Desert were below sea level and proposed that a canal be dug from the Mediterranean Sea to these Saharan basins, which would allow for the creation of an inland "Sahara Sea". Others had made similar proposals at the same time, and canal building generally was a popular geopolitical endeavor of the first decade of the 1900s, when Invasion of the Sea was written.
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