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1 results

  • 29 - The Egyptian Campaign and the Middle East

  • from Part V - Other Spheres of War
  • Edited by Bruno Colson, Alexander Mikaberidze, Louisiana State University, Shreveport
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars
    Published online:
    20 December 2022
    Print publication:
    02 March 2023, pp 607-626

  • Summary

    Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 invasion of Egypt represented the first modern attempt to incorporate an Islamic society into the European fold. Although the expedition was a military fiasco, it left a lasting legacy in the region. The invasion constituted the formative moment for the discourse of Orientalism, when all of its ideological components converged and a full arsenal of instruments of Western domination was employed to protect it. The occupation itself did little to modernize Egyptian society, because the revolutionary principles that the French tried to introduce were too radical and foreign, and met determined local resistance. But Napoleon created a political vacuum in Egypt that was soon filled by Kavalali Mehmet Ali Pasha, who, within a decade of the French departure, began laying the foundation for the reformed and modernized Egypt that later would play such an important role in the Middle East.