Napoleon in Egypt

Book Review: Napoleon's failure in Egypt
nj.com

Napoleon in Egypt
Paul Strathern
Bantam Dell, 496 pp., $30

Reviewed by Jonathan E. Lazarus

A strategically located Middle Eastern nation, with a long and rich history, had fallen on hard times. It was ruled in the most autocratic fashion by the Mamelukes, a fanatical sect who squandered resources, terrorized the population and reduced the country to a brackish backwater of the Ottoman Empire.

The nation was Egypt, and with modern parallels painfully obvious, it looked ripe for invasion in 1798. Napoleon, fresh from spectacular victories in an Italian campaign, gazed east, heard the siren song and managed to sell France's corrupt Directory on a massive expedition. He would subdue the Mamelukes, bring the civilizing virtues of Europe to the Islamic population and secure French interests against the British. Secretly, the man who fancied himself spiritual heir to Alexander the Great, hoped to establish an empire stretching to India -- one he could rule in unchallenged splendor.

Of course, most of this solipsistic exercise went horribly wrong.

Exhibition: Bonaparte and Egypt
Stars and Stripes

Although Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign in Egypt was a military failure, it had a great influence on France’s culture. Those interested in the French emperor’s time in Egypt won’t want to miss the exhibition "Bonaparte et l’Egypte, feu et lumières" ("Bonaparte and Egypt, Fire and Light") showing through March 29 at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.

The Fondation Napoléon, a French non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Napoleonic historic and architectural heritage, says the exhibit looks at not only the campaign but also the influence of France’s intervention through a collection of books, engravings, paintings, sketches and objects, all gathered by French and Egyptian specialists.

See the above pages for more.