"I Know Thee not, I Loathe Thy Race": Romantic Orientalism in the Eye of the Other

Abstract

Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, conceived in a spirit of rivalry to British imperialism in India, extended French military ambitions beyond the limits of Europe and initiated a legacy of colonialism in Africa that would produce, among other less commendable cultural artifacts, a rich Orientalist literature, of which Flaubert's Salammbo, with its luridly sensual evocations of decadence and the corrupt grandeur of power, might be considered typical. Napoleon, too, seems to have gone to Egypt pursuing a mirage of Oriental glory that would contribute to his career as an aspirant to Empire and confer on him the status of world-historical figure that Hegel and others would later fabricate for him as the outstanding political leader of the age. The campaign itself was characterized by extremes of violence and bloodshed that surpass even the usual sanguinary passages of Napoleon's military exploits and rival the surrealistic excesses of Flaubert's novel; and the desert conditions and brutal methods of warfare taxed Napoleon's capacity for leadership. But it was an uneven contest at best, as the fully modernized French forces clashed with quasi-medieval Muslim hordes lacking arms and military discipline. Victory for the French here, as in Europe, was simply a matter of the triumph of the modern imperial nation-state, with its institutionalized techniques of political organization, over peoples still living in traditional forms of social life. Napoleon, with his talent for stage-managing political events, was