Imagined Empires

by Zeinab Abul-Magd

  During the mid-1790s, the images that Sonnini and similar experts constructed fed into the ideological underpinnings on which Paris based its decision to colonize Egypt. Political cleavages in the French Republic broke out in debates about the importance of France’s imperial expansion overseas, especially after losing many colonies in the Americas. Historian Juan Cole indicates that there were two competing ideological trends with regard to colonialism: liberalism and conservatism. Discussions between them were heated in the legislature and the Directory—a council of five men elected from the legislature. The original revolutionaries, the Jacobins, were against colonialism and called both for ending it and slavery. Another group of politicians argued that it was imperative for France to obtain external colonies in order to “prosper.” Colonizing Egypt for its trade and sugarcane cultivation and, above all, to weaken the British Empire in India, were all key rationales that many French imperialists contemplated. The conservative camp eventually triumphed, and the concept of “satellite republics” was born. Colonies were to be turned into republics modeled after France, liberated from old oppressive regimes and enjoying democracy and freedom of the press, but controlled by Paris. The French would seek to create such satellite republics worldwide, starting with weaker areas in Europe, such as Italy.24 In 1798, echoing Savary and Sonnini, one legislator by the name of Joseph Eschasseriaux argued that Egypt was “half-civilized” and easy to conquer. Cole quotes Eschasseriaux as saying, “What finer enterprise for a nation which has already given liberty to Europe [and] freed America than to regenerate in every sense a country which was the first home to civilization . . . and to carry back to their ancient cradle industry, science, and the arts, to cast into the centuries the foundations of a new Thebes or of another Memphis.”25

  The revolutionary ideologues of the late 1790s condemned European conquests as a crime against humanity but still assumed they were embarking on a civilizing mission (mission civilisatrice) in backward societies, where they sought to introduce “progress.” Through creating dependent democracies, they aimed to deliver freedom to oppressed nations and rescue them from backwardness. The same vision, ironically, maintained that all human beings were equals—brothers—and that one nation should not subjugate or exploit another. Human civilization, according to French revolutionaries, followed one universal path toward progress, and Europe was at the top of this line. The Occident should be a model for other nations to imitate, with French conquerors introducing the sciences and laws of human rights to the world’s backwaters.26 Thus, from the outset, the French imperial ideology was based on assimilating natives into the colonizer’s culture—as opposed to the British ideology of administration from above. In order to spread the values of the Republic, the French preferred direct rather than indirect rule, and they intended for the colonized to adopt their customs and habits.27

  As for Napoléon Bonaparte himself, his decision to invade Egypt was based on a belief in the essential role of the military in achieving Republican goals. He called for the spread of French liberties in the world, despite his criticism of democracy and the masses’ participation in government. As Cole asserts, “[Napoléon] was already a critic of liberal democracy . . . . He complained of the impossibility of a republic made up of thirty million persons, all with different values.”28 In Napoléon’s speech to soldiers before they set sail from Malta—which he had captured first—to Alexandria, he condemned the Mamluk tyrants who oppress the Egyptians and favored British merchants over the French. He swore to eradicate them within a few days of arriving in Egypt. On the other hand, the soldiers in his army were well indoctrinated with imperial propaganda. According to Cole, “The enthusiasm of the French troops and officers who joined Napoleon’s army was very much shaped by the revolution and by the ideology of the early republic . . . . Republican rhetoric deployed ‘liberty’ as its refrain . . . . Bonaparte in his communiqué clearly conveyed the idea that the Republican army incarnated the virtue of liberty, and was now exporting it to an exotic locale.”29

  Inspired by the texts of previous travelers and their leaders’ speeches, these troops carried romantic visions of Egypt derived from ancient Pharaonic, Greek, Roman, and Ptolemaic times, and their fantasies were charged with scenes from such narratives. As their ships sailed to Alexandria, the French soldiers were thinking of Napoléon as another Alexander the Great, and they imagined Cleopatra’s Egypt waiting for them to restore her glory.30

  CRISIS OF IMAGES AND JIHAD

  The French fleet, l’armée d’Orient, landed in Alexandria in July 1798. Bloody confrontations with the inhabitants of the port city immediately erupted, and afterward the army proceeded to Cairo, where it defeated the Mamluks in several decisive battles. The French finally advanced to conquer Upper Egypt a few months later, in 1799. Experts who accompanied the troops continued to reproduce the same images of barbarian natives, but the locals now were taking an active role in shaping those images. The Arab tribes and Copts in Upper Egypt indeed did welcome their self-appointed saviors and formed faithful alliances with them, but only to take advantage of the invaders, who appeared to be exploitable. Moreover, whereas the experts still articulated a vision of the administratively competent self and the backward other, military leaders were hit hard by reality, as well as by Jihadists, and produced a completely different discourse.

  Upon arriving in Cairo, Napoléon disseminated a long proclamation in broken Arabic. He asserted that the emancipating campaign was undertaken in the name of God: French soldiers were Muslims who believed in and obeyed the one God of Egyptian Muslims. Napoléon threatened that if the French were not met with full obedience and submission, the natives would face devastating punishments. The voices of Savary and Sonnini were heavily present in this document, especially in Napoléon’s recounting of the ancient glory of Egypt that had declined due to the Mamluk foreign military elite and in his mention of vanished commerce and ruined canals:

  In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. There is no God but God . . . . On behalf of the French Republic which is based upon the foundation of liberty and equality, General Bonaparte, Commander-in-Chief of the French armies makes known to all Egyptian people that . . . this group of Mamluks, imported from the mountains of Circassia and Georgia, have acted corruptly for ages in the fairest land that is to be found upon the face of the globe . . . . I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors and that I more than the Mamluks, serve God—may He be praised and exalted—and revere His Prophet Muhammad and the glorious Qur’an . . . . Formerly, in the lands of Egypt there were great cities, and wide canals, and extensive commerce and nothing ruined all this but the avarice and the tyranny of the Mamluks . . . . The French are also faithful Muslims . . . . Blessing on blessing to the Egyptians who will act in concert with us, without any delay . . . . But woe upon woe to those who will unite with the Mamluks . . . . Every village that shall rise against the French army, shall be burnt down.31

  Ironically, from the beginning Napoléon did not insist on liberating Upper Egypt: he was content to rule it through the old Mamluk despots. As the army of freedom was losing numerous souls to the insurgency in the north, Napoléon secretly negotiated with Murad Bey—the chief Mamluk leader who fled from Cairo to the south—in order to allow him to govern Upper Egypt in return for payment of annual taxes. A month after landing in Egypt, Napoléon sent a neutral envoy, the Austrian consul, to Murad in order to propose a peace treaty stipulating that France would not pursue the occupation of the south and that Murad would rule it in the name of the Republic. The Austrian consul, a legal deputy of Napoléon, was entitled to sign the agreement immediately if Murad agreed to its conditions—regardless of what the natives of Upper Egypt thought. Receiving the news of some defeats of the French fleet in the north, Murad refused the proposal and offered Napoléon, with an insulting tone, money to go back to France and save the blood of his soldiers. After the negotiations failed, Napoléon had
no choice but to send General Désaix and his troops to colonize the south.32

  The situation in Upper Egypt was much more complicated than what the French expected. The final, key battles to conquer the south took place in the towns and villages of Qina Province. Murad Bey and Arab peasants launched what they called a holy war of Jihad against the French in Qina. Napoléon’s allegations that he and his soldiers were Muslims did not work. The insurgents where fighting the French “infidels” in the name of God, in response to the Ottoman sultan’s consecutive decrees that he sent from Istanbul to Qina Province’s courts, such as the town of Isna’s court, addressing Arab notables and commoners.

  Deploying religious rhetoric in these decrees that cited Qur’anic verses and the Prophet Muhammad’s tradition, the sultan asked his Muslim subjects in every province in Upper Egypt to defend the religion of Islam. The ultimate goal of the French atheists and disbelievers in God (kuffar), said the sultan, was to destroy the Muslims’ places of worship in Mecca and Medina and kill off the Muslim population of these two holy cities. He particularly addressed the Arab tribes, saying that they were not regular believers but by lineage were the cousins of the Prophet Muhammad and had greater responsibilities to defend the Islamic faith. He warned the Arab tribes against French wicked promises and means of manipulation and added that whoever followed them would be committing apostasy and should be killed and robbed by other faithful Muslims.33 Interestingly enough, the sultan asked Muslims to take care of Copts and treat them as they treated the ruling elite of commanders and the nobility: “They [Copts] pay the legal poll-tax [jiziya shar‘iyya] and they have what we have and are obliged to what we are obliged to,” the sultan asserted.34

  The calls of Istanbul for Jihad reached Arabia, and the army of the prince of Mecca, Sharif Hasan, soon crossed the Red Sea to the port of Qusayr and from there to Qina Province, in order to fight for Islam. Religious propaganda aside, Sharif Hasan joined the effort because his commercial interests and grain provisions that shipped from Upper Egypt through Qusayr to the holy places in Hijaz (Mecca and Medina) would be severed by the French occupation. The prince was also responding to Murad Bey, who successfully mobilized many Red Sea locations on the Arabian Peninsula for Jihad. The Arabian holy warriors—or mujahidin and ghuza, as the sultan called them—included the ruling Arab family of Ashraf that claimed lineage back to the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the supreme jurist consult (mufti) of Medina, a notable Moroccan family that settled in the port of Jeddah, and many merchants whose trade was harmed by the occupation. They organized a large fleet well equipped with guns, swords, and food provisions for the mujahidin who were poor and could not provision themselves. According to French estimates, the number of Arabian volunteers reached six thousand or seven thousand.35

  Along with other thousands of native Arab peasants, the Arabian volunteers united with the army of Murad Bey against General Désaix. Arab and Mamluk Jihadists fought in Qina Province’s villages and town’s, including Samhud, Isna, Abnud, Abu Manna’, and Qift. When Désaix seized the seat of the province, Sharif Hasan led Hijazi knights and eight hundred Arab peasants to restore the city. The peasants attacked French Battalion No. 61 and forced the soldiers to withdraw. It was an enormous defeat, with extensive losses on the French side. The victorious Jihadists plundered ammunitions and weapons from the French ships and used them in later battles. In the battle of Abnud, the French committed an unprecedented massacre, burning houses in the town and slaughtering Hijazis and natives. The streets of Abnud were filled with the corpses of local inhabitants and Meccan volunteers.36

  Amid these bloody scenes, the French experts who accompanied the troops in Upper Egypt still perpetuated the false image of the proficient colonial self that Savary and Sonnini had articulated. The French acted as intelligent surveyors, certain that quick visits to houses and gazes at the inhabitants would suffice for them to understand native peoples, classify them, figure out their problems, and decide how to reform them into free citizens. Brief observations of the Upper Egyptians were, in vain, thought to be enough to grasp the culture and economy and enable the colonizer to take over. Thus, scientists went into villages, recorded descriptions of women and children, food, diseases, superstition, medicine, and more.37 In this context, France was depicted with a glory equal to that of the Roman Empire, with its enlightened soldiers respecting and valuing the ancient monuments more than the native savages.38

  Likewise, French experts perpetuated old, false images about the natives. But it was not entirely their fault: deceptive natives misled them to such conclusions. Vivant Denon, an Egyptologist who joined the troops to draw sketches of and write about the Pharaonic monuments, was an eyewitness of the battles that took place in Qina Province and recorded them in meticulous detail. Heartily believing that his compatriots were emancipators, he thought that Copts and some Arab tribes sincerely welcomed and adored the French, as they provided the troops with significant logistical assistance during the holy war.39 Denon was under the illusion that a romantic, tender relationship emerged between Copts and the French. In one incident, Copts pretended that they liked the civilized French, giving the title of “the Just” to General Désaix because he treated them equitably. The head of the Copts provided the French with all the information they needed, and he tenderly cried as they were departing for the battlefields, as recounted by Denon:

  Their zeal induced them to come and give us all the intelligence which they had been able to collect . . . the sheik [chief of Copts] . . . followed us as far as he could, and parted from us with tears in his eyes. Defaix had before been a week at Kous [Qus], and he had seen much of the sheik; and the tender interest which the latter showed for us, was the natural result of the favorable opinion which he must have formed of the frank and communicative disposition of our leader, and of that mild and unvarying equity which afterwards obtained for him the title of the Just; the most honorable appellation which could be obtained by a conqueror and a stranger, arrived in an enemy’s country on purpose to make war.40

  In another incident, the French attacked a Mamluk fortress in a village, resulting in a bloody battle in which dozens of the Republic’s soldiers were killed. Coptic bishops sided with the French against the Mamluks in this battle, and the Mamluks later punished those Christians with imprisonment.41 Denon showed how rich Copts, accustomed to Mamluk raids and plunder, were surprised to see that the French paid for everything they took from them. Denon was proud of his fellow citizens, who behaved with the Copts in an extraordinary way that superseded African and Asian habits: “Armed men, with power in their hands, who paid!”42

  Similarly, Denon thought that some Arab tribes were fully loyal to the French. After one battle in which the Mamluks were fiercely defeated, the ‘Ababida tribe realized that they were insufficiently equipped to resist, so they went to Qina in order to make peace with the French. The ‘Ababida provided the French with extra logistical support—camels and guidance in the desert—for a battle in Qusayr. “We entirely gained their friendship,” said Denon, “by exercising with them in mock charges, and showing so much confidence in them, as to accompany them all day at a distance from Cosseir, and riding with them at the rate of a league in less than a quarter an hour . . . . We were . . . preceded by our Arab friends, to whom the desert seemed by right to belong.”43 Before the French entered Qusayr, The ‘Ababida preceded them to inform the other Arab inhabitants about their arrival, and the tribal shaykhs in the port returned with the ‘Ababida envoys to the French with abundant gifts and offered accommodation. The hospitable ‘Ababida welcomed the French into their tents. After the final victory over Qusayr, the French went back to Qina Province, where they supposedly were received with much hospitality by more Arab tribes.

  Denon noticed that whereas elite Arab inhabitants largely sided with the French, the lower classes joined the Jihadist army of the Mamluks. Upper-class Arabs were used to being dispossessed by the Mamluks, he opined, so they greeted the French as victors. In Qin
a Province, wealthy Arab shaykhs—especially merchants who sought protection for their caravans during the war—showed obedience and paid tribute to the new rulers. Denon was naïvely happy with this, so he pointed out the good will (d’étquité charma) of those Arabs and wrote, “[This] gave me hopes that, for the future, we might promote at the same time the happiness of the natives and the interests of the colonists.”44 On the other hand, poor peasants where easily deployed in Murad Bey’s holy army. The French Republic supposedly had come to extend rights and equality to these lower classes, but they did not respond gratefully because, Denon guessed, they were accustomed to obedience and the Mamluks seduced them with religious propaganda.45

  Facing harsh reality, French officers perceived the inhabitants of Upper Egypt in a different light than that of the dreamy scientific and cultural experts. Gradually realizing that some Arabs and Copts were deceiving them and pretending to be loyal, French generals expected treason at any moment and mercilessly punished native allies whom they were suspicious of, as revealed by correspondence between the generals in Upper Egypt and the central command in Cairo. The letters of General Menou, the second commander in chief to succeed Napoléon, ordered the army in the south to keep peace with the Arab tribes but treat them cruelly if they denounced their peace truces.46 Friendly Arab tribes assured Boyer, a battalion commander, that they were eager to meet the army of Murad Bey quickly in order to prove their loyalty. Members of these tribes worked as informants, following the movement of the camps of Jihadists and carrying the French officers’ mail to Cairo. Two hundred Arabs accompanied Boyer in an expeditionary mission in the desert to look for the Mamluk camps. Boyer, nonetheless, was anxious about his allies’ concealed intentions. When he grew suspicious that a certain shaykh was a double agent, he immediately placed him under detention. In addition, Boyer followed a policy of divide and rule with the Arab tribes, using tribes’ past animosity and disputes to play the groups against each other. When he expected betrayal from one tribe, he incited an enemy tribe against it.47