The French Revolution in Global Perspective by Nelson William Max;Hunt Lynn;Desan Suzanne;

Author:Nelson, William Max;Hunt, Lynn;Desan, Suzanne;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8014-6746-2
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)

The French Revolution in Egypt

Because Egypt was itself in the throes of internecine struggles, its response to and participation in the early stages of the French Revolution was limited. But as France confronted postrevolutionary stabilization and the challenge of repositioning the republic in a new global order, Egypt became crucial, and was drawn more fully into the Revolution. Although it did not border France like Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, or the German states, Egypt, straddling the isthmus connecting Africa and Asia, represented an important axis of France’s competitive global interests. By the second half of the eighteenth century, although France had been largely pushed out of India and North America, French interests in the Levant trade had become dominant. Egypt was the link between these Mediterranean interests and global empire in Asia, particularly for the British in India.19 The last independent rulers in India sought French aid in resisting British advances, and control of Egypt could offer a means to support Tipu Sultan, who was fighting a war of resistance against the encroachments of the East India Company.20 General Bonaparte maintained a correspondence with Tipu, in the hope of connecting with the insurgent forces in India. Egypt offered further connections with the sharif of Mecca and rulers in Yemen and Oman through the Sudan to Ethiopia and across the northern coast of Africa to Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers. All of these powers maintained consistent neutrality after the Revolution and had shown themselves open to entertaining political alliances with France.

Moreover, although Egypt was neither part of French territory nor on its borders, for historical reasons it was not completely external to French sovereignty. Merchants from Marseille were well established in Egypt even before Provence became a permanent part of France in the fifteenth century. Egypt at that time was ruled by a dynasty known as Mamluk (owned) because they were bought as slaves and trained as warriors. The Provençal merchants concluded a treaty with the Mamluk sultan that ensured them protection and trading privileges. When the Ottomans conquered Egypt in 1517 they maintained the Mamluk ruling institution and continued these arrangements, extending them to European merchants in other parts of the empire through agreements known as “Capitulations.” Extraterritorial sovereignty over French subjects in Egypt was a valuable prerogative of the ancien régime French monarchy. Because of these long-standing arrangements, French merchants mixed with a multiplicity of other categories—including other Europeans or “Franks,” local Christians, Jews, and Muslims—as an element of the Ottoman urban fabric, and never as an isolated and distinct foreign colony.21 Indeed, Raoul Clément suggests that until the reign of Louis XIV the French in Egypt had lived “a life almost independent of [French] royal power,” in their own quarter or “country” of Cairo, and in Alexandria in a walled “okelle” (wakil in Arabic).22

These older liberties played a role in the strong republican tendencies of the French in Egypt. In the course of the eighteenth century, Paris inexorably tightened its grip on the populations of the Échelles, rescinding the

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