Conrad Malte-Brun born Malthe Conrad Bruun, was a Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

-French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 geographer

Geographer

A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...

 and journalist. His second son, Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun

Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun

Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun was a French geographer and cartographer.He was born in Paris, France. The son of Conrad Malte-Brun, another geographer, of Danish origin, and founder of the Société de Géographie....

, was also a geographer.

Biography

Born in Thisted

Thisted

Thisted is a town in Thisted municipality of Region Nordjylland, in Denmark. It has a population of 13,005 and is located in Thy, in northwestern Jutland....

 to an administrator of Danish crown land

Crown land

In Commonwealth realms, Crown land is an area belonging to the monarch , the equivalent of an entailed estate that passed with the monarchy and could not be alienated from it....

s, Malte-Brun was destined for a career as a pastor

Pastor

The word pastor usually refers to an ordained leader of a Christian congregation. When used as an ecclesiastical styling or title, this role may be abbreviated to "Pr." or often "Ps"....

, but chose instead to attend classes at the University of Copenhagen

University of Copenhagen

The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...

, and became a supporter of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 and an activist in favor of freedom of the press

Freedom of the press

Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...

. Following the harsh censorship laws instituted by the Danish ruler crown prince Frederick

Frederick VI of Denmark

Frederick VI reigned as King of Denmark , and as king of Norway .-Regent of Denmark:Frederick's parents were King Christian VII and Caroline Matilda of Wales...

 in September 1799, he was indicted because of his many pamphlets which contained outright criticism of the government, something which the new censorship laws forbade. The case of Peter Andreas Heiberg

Peter Andreas Heiberg

Peter Andreas Heiberg was a Danish author and philologist. He was born in Vordingborg, Denmark. The Heiberg ancestry can be traced back to Norway, and has produced a long line of priests, headmasters and other learned men...

, who for similar crimes had been sentenced to exile at Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

 of 1799 did not make Malte-Brun optimistic about his chances. He had already left the country prior to the court sentence (which was first carried late 1800) and had settled first in Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, later in the Free City of Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

.

Malte-Brun arrived in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 in November 1799, and began work on a geography treatise meant as a gift to his adoptive country. This was accomplished with the help of Edme Mentelle, a professor at the École Normale

École Normale Supérieure

The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...

; together, they produced Géographie mathématique, physique et politique de toutes les parties du monde (6 vols., published between 1803 and 1812).

A regular contributor to Journal des Débats

Journal des Débats

The Journal des débats was a French newspaper, published between 1789 and 1944 that changed title several times...

, he was also the founder of Les Annales des Voyages (in 1807) and Les Annales des Voyages, de la Géographie et de l'Histoire (in 1819), which encouraged observations and reports as a basis for research. He became well known after contributing Tableau de la Pologne, a treatise on the geography of Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 (in 1807, as the First Empire

First French Empire

The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...

 troops established French tutelage in the region

Duchy of Warsaw

The Duchy of Warsaw was a Polish state established by Napoleon I in 1807 from the Polish lands ceded by the Kingdom of Prussia under the terms of the Treaties of Tilsit. The duchy was held in personal union by one of Napoleon's allies, King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony...

). In 1822-1824, he served as the first general secretary of the newly founded Société de Géographie

Société de Géographie

The Société de Géographie , is the world's oldest geographical society. It was founded in 1821 . Since 1878, its headquarters has been at 184 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris. The entrance is marked by two gigantic caryatids representing Land and Sea...

.

Malte-Brun was the first person to suggest importing camels into Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. See Australian feral camel

Australian feral camel

Thousands of the two main species of Australian feral camels, mostly dromedaries but also some bactrian camels, were imported into Australia during the 19th century for transport and construction as part of the colonisation of the central and western parts of Australia. Motorised transport replaced...

.

He died in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1826, as he was drafting the final version of his major work, the Précis de Géographie Universelle ou Description de toutes les parties du monde. His name was given to a street in both Paris (XXe arrondissement

XXe arrondissement

The 20th arrondissement, also known as arrondissement de Ménilmontant, located on the Right Bank, is one of the 20 arrondissements of Paris, France. It contains the cosmopolitan districts of Ménilmontant and Belleville which have welcomed many successive waves of immigration since the middle of the...

) and Thisted.