HistoryIn 1798, the French republic, looking to deal a knockout blow to Great Britain, entrusted a sizeable army and much of its fleet to a young, gifted, and enormously ambitious Corsican general, Napoleon Bonaparte, who despite an early association with the Jacobin faction had emerged unscathed from the revolution.
The target of this expedition was Egypt, nominally part of the Ottoman Empire but in practice a separate country ruled by a foreign self- perpetuating caste, the Mamelukes. Increasingly identified by Europe's philosophers of the day as the source of western civilisation, Egypt seemed, from merchants' reports, to be frozen in time by Mameluke rule. The expedition's strategic goal was to threaten Britain's profitable connection with India, by posing a twin threat: overland, through the Middle East and Persia, or maritime, from potential bases on the Red Sea.
The expedition was not just about strategy, however, at least not to its commander. Bonaparte hungered for glory not just on the field of battle, but in the field of letters as well, and enjoyed the company of his country's savants, whom he brought to Egypt. Thus, with his army, there sailed artists, linguists, philosophers, and representatives of all the sciences, hoping to spread news of the advances made, on behalf of mankind, by the republic, but also to examine, master and describe the nature, the people, and the culture of Egypt.
In Napoleon in Egypt, his first venture into the period, Paul Strathern is never convincing in his explanation of Bonaparte's thought processes, character, and immediate goals. Strathern seems convinced, and asks us to believe, that Bonaparte genuinely saw himself as the potential ruler of a vast eastern empire, as a modern-day Alexander: but much of the proof that the author advances in this regard is based on the rumours that swirled around the French army, and Napoleon's later reminiscences, notably his self-serving memoirs. It is easier to believe that Bonaparte desired a quick and grandiose victory in order to shore up his political ambitions, dazzling his countrymen with the riches - material and cultural - of the Levant. Of the consequences of his actions, Bonaparte thought little.
That is not to say that this is not an exciting and enjoyable book. The subject matter is simply extraordinary. There is the clash of cultures between the atheist French and the Muslim Egyptians, which ranged from the belief in, respectively, science and sorcery, to taste in women. There is the gradual discovery, by westerners, of the remnants of ancient Egypt, by then no longer intelligible to the local population, which was thus seen by the French as a people in decline. And, of course, there are battles aplenty: the French army defeated the Mamelukes at the Battle of the Pyramids and the Ottomans at Aboukir, but was thwarted by the bloodthirsty governor of Acre, Ahmad Pasha el-Djezzar, and had to endure the consequences of Nelson's crushing victory at the Battle of the Nile. One of the most extraordinary circumstances that Bonaparte had to contend with, as he governed Egypt from his palace in Cairo, was the absolute dearth of news from France, since most missives to and from the expedition were intercepted and read by the blockading Royal Navy. This blockade also meant that he was waging a campaign in a hostile land with an army which could not replenish itself, and which was highly vulnerable to diseases, notably the plague.
This lack of communication aside, the parallels with today's world are striking. Bonaparte went out of his way to demonstrate that the French army had come to liberate Egypt from the Mamelukes with the blessing of the Sultan in Constantinople, which was untrue, and, more implausibly still, that the French republic, being anti-Christian, was therefore pro-Muslim. He attempted to rule through Egyptian notables, assembled forcefully in local assemblies, the divans, and promised endless reforms and improvements, among them a canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea: but never did he convince Egyptians to trust and follow him, and to accept France's friendship and good intentions. Revolts and constant insecurity were the result, with terrible consequences for the civilian population.
Unfortunately, Paul Strathern has little to say on the impact which Bonaparte's Egyptian adventure had on the future relations between an increasingly confident Europe and what was about to become the colonial world, although this was the expedition's most significant, and troubling, legacy. That year, 1798, marked the start of the Orientalist enterprise by which Europeans - and North Americans - felt entitled to judge other peoples, allotting them a place in an imagined scale of racial and cultural worth. Readers of French might consider as an alternative Robert Solé's Bonaparte à la Conquête de l'Egypte (Seuil, 2006), another overview of the subject but one written by an author who has devoted his literary career to exploring Franco-Egyptian links.
Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses is senior lecturer in the department of history, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
Napoleon in Egypt: "The Greatest Glory" By Paul Strathern Jonathan Cape, 480pp. £20