Historical researches which throw fresh light on the consequences of the
Napoleonic invasion of Egypt are a matter of general interest, since the
forces set in motion in 1798 are still at work in the life of East and
West alike. There are two nations, however, which are concerned in a
particularly intimate way: the Egyptians, whose country—with its
wonderful productivity and its unrivalled strategic position—has been
one of the two focuses of the so-called Eastern Question (the other
focus being the Black Sea Straits), and the British, who eventually
succeeded to the heritage which Napoleon staked out as a prize to be
contended for, through War and Diplomacy, by the Western Powers. The
historical work introduced by this foreword has been written, in
English, by an Egyptian historian who has made postgraduate studies in
two British Universities and is now engaged in public work in his own
country. It is to be hoped that an Arabic translation of the book will
be published in due course in Egypt, in order that it may be accessible
to students of history in both countries. In the opinion of the writer
of this prefatory note (who had the pleasure of “supervising” part of
Mr. Ghorbal’s researches—a “supervision” in which he learnt more than he
taught), Mr. Ghorbal possesses just that combination of qualifications
which these researches require. He is in personal touch with both East
and West—with the East because it is his home, and with the West because
he has lived and studied here—and at the same time he is so thoroughly
detached from the passions and prejudices that enter into his field of
study that—were not his name printed on the title page—it would be
difficult to guess from internal evidence whether the author were an
Englishman, a Frenchman, an Egyptian, or none of these. This is a
remarkable achievement because these passions and prejudices of more
than a century ago are not without a bearing on contemporary
controversies between Englishmen and Egyptians. Yet no reflection of
contemporary politics can be discerned in Mr. Ghorbal’s work. When it is
added that Mr. Ghorbal understands not only the science of extracting
information from archives, but the art of presenting the information
which he obtains, enough will have been said to show that this book is
very well worth reading, if only for the author’s merits. Nor is this
one of those good books on bad subjects. The subject which Mr. Ghorbal
has chosen to study is as good as can be desired.
Let anyone who is not alive to its fascination turn to the passage in
the contemporary Egyptian historian, Djabarti (he has been published in
a French translation as well as in his own original Arabic), in which he
describes the descent of the French upon Egypt in 1798. The piquancy of
the situation lay in the fact that the French had descended on Egypt
before—in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—at a time when they had
been the inferiors of the Orientals in general civilisation, not
excluding the art of war. The mediæval French Knight had been a clumsier
and less expert version of the Mameluke; and accordingly, when he tried
conclusions with the Mameluke, he had been badly beaten and had
abandoned the attempt to conquer Egypt as a total failure. For five and
a half centuries the Frenchman left Egypt alone, while he metamorphosed
himself from the Frank of 1250 into the Westerner of 1798. For five and
a half centuries the Mamelukes remained as they were (except that they
abandoned their Central Asian bows for English carbines) and they
naturally assumed that the French had changed as little as they had
changed themselves. Consequently, when they heard that Napoleon had had
the temerity to land at Alexandria, they proposed to deal with him as
they had dealt with St. Louis. Light-heartedly they rode out to trample
his little army under their horses’ hoofs, and then suddenly they
encountered not men (as human capacity was conceived of by Orientals in
1798), but creatures armed with all the incomprehensible and
irresistible powers of Mr. Wells’s “Martians.” At the first onset, these
Occidental “Martians” carried all before them, and Oriental mankind was
stunned. Egypt became a battleground on which superhuman Frenchmen and
superhuman Englishmen fought one another.
Then there appeared in Egypt the Oriental man of genius who disputes
with Napoleon the title to be the leading personality in this drama:
Mehemet Ali. Like the troglodyte artilleryman in Mr. Wells’s story,
Mehemet Ali had the imagination and the audacity to conceive the idea of
stealing the supermen’s thunder. He saw that the French and English were
not gods, after all, but men of like passions with the Turks and
Egyptians. Their superiority lay in technique and organisation, and the
secret of these could be learnt. The first Oriental man of action to
learn this secret might become the master of Egypt, and Mehemet Ali
determined to be that man. Though Mr. Ghorbal does not carry the story
of Mehemet Ali down beyond 1812, he shows him already reaping in Egypt
the harvest which Napoleon had sown.
These two principal characters occupy the front of the stage and rivet
the attention, but there are a number of minor characters who contribute
to the interest and the entertainment of the play. We see Sultan Mahmud
II of Turkey just coming into action. In his obstinate refusal to
surrender the Danubian Principalities he is already displaying that
staying-power which was to make him the embodiment of the Turkish
national character and the preserver of the Ottoman Empire. We see
Abdallah Jacques Menou, the ex-aristocrat-turned-Muslim commander of the
French Army in Egypt after the departure of Napoleon and the
assassination of Kléber, speculating on the application of the “single
tax” to Egyptian fiscal conditions while the British expeditionary
forces close in on him from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. We see
Sir Sidney Smith conducting his psychological offensive against the
home-sickness of the French Army of Egypt and its supposed anti-
Republican proclivities. We see Lord Elgin dividing the time which he
was presumed to be devoting to diplomatic activities on behalf of his
country to the collection of Turkish “purses” and Greek “marbles.” We
see the Mameluke Bey Elfi carrying away “a taste for milk punch” as the
fruit of his visit to England. And we see Dundas passing sleepless
nights over the French menace to India, but failing to make the flesh of
his colleagues in the Cabinet creep in sympathy with his own.
These are a few features taken at random from Mr. Ghorbal’s very
thorough and comprehensive, and also very readable, study. He has gone
back to the original authorities at every point (a good illustration of
this is his re-examination of the celebrated report of Sebastiani) and
he has treated his subject on the right scale. He has realised that
Egypt was a pawn in a diplomatic game played at Constantinople, and that
this game itself was a “side-show” in the bigger game of Western
politics. That, however, which was a “sideshow” from the standpoint of
the West was the first act in an economic, political and cultural
revolution from the standpoint of the Oriental World.