Napoleon in Egypt: Al-Jabarti's Chronicle of the French Occupation, 1788 Book

A very mixed bag

True confession---I only made it through 55-60% of this book. I didn’t read steadily after some time, but skipped around. There are three main sections besides the introduction, which initiates readers into the general historical background of the French invasion of Egypt in 1798. Napoleon wanted to control Egypt because 1) it was a major trading partner of France at the time, 2) it suited his sense of glory to be ruler of the ancient center of civilization and to expand Western knowledge of history, geography, and natural resources, and 3) to thwart British efforts to expand in the Middle East and to threaten their hold on India from which the French had been expelled not long before. This was not the first and definitely not the last attempt by a strong power to bring a weaker power under control for “the best of reasons” which prove historically to be weak justification.

The first section consists of an account by an Egyptian eyewitness. This is rare in historical annals because it has almost always been the Invader who writes the history of a particular conquest. How many Aztec or Maya accounts do we have of the Spanish invasions? What about Native American accounts from the first century of European invasion of North America? There are no Aboriginal accounts of invasion from Australia. What did the many African societies write about the conquest of their lands? Did they have a chance to write? That said, what Al-Jabarti wrote was aimed more at an Egyptian audience. There are lists of people who acted in a certain way, lists of people who said this or that, and short mentions of battles that occurred in places not found on the very skimpy map provided. The Egyptian author also devoted several pages to pointing out the grammatical mistakes in Arabic made in the French proclamations issued to the population. I’m afraid I skipped those pages. There are some interesting observations and negative comments on French behavior and the later inferiority complex of colonial days is entirely absent. While generally disliking the French (not surprisingly), Al Jabarti does admire their superior organization and their intellectual curiosity.

The second and third sections were easier for a Western reader, but much shorter. The second section is an account by a French aide to Napoleon of the same times, while the third is a reflection on the long-term effect of the brief occupation by none other than Edward Said of “Orientalism” fame, written around the same time as his famous book.

People engaged in the study of Napoleon, of Egypt or of European expansion will find this book very useful. For the merely curious reader, the prospect is not so wonderful. Once I read a book on the travels of Ibn Batutta (14th century). The author of the book DESCRIBED the travels with many a quote from the actual work. He did not try to translate directly because, as he noted, the concerns of that time are not the concerns of modern readers. I think the same tack might have been taken in this book too. It would have been a more successful gambit.