When is a door not a door?

France and Egypt in the Age of the Vice-roys, 1805-1882, Aix-en-Provence, 5-7 July 1998

This year, as far as France and Egypt were concerned, has been a year of conflict, sometimes open but most often subterranean -- a conflict over definitions and appellations, over celebrations and commemorations.

The French Expedition turned 200 on 2 July: 200 years, to the day, since Napoleon and his men disembarked at Dekheila and embarked on their historic mission to introduce Egypt to modernity. Or, that is, since they arrived on the first great imperialist venture of the modern age, rolling up their sleeves in preparation for a bit of looting and pillaging. Which is it? The debates have been rumbling in the distance since last year, as bits and pieces of Egypt's Pharaonic and Fatimid past were packed up and shipped off to France, along with a few more recent artistic creations -- peace offerings, perhaps, to show there really are no hard feelings, two centuries on.

Irony was not necessarily the best tool with which to examine such ardent assertions that this year marks 200 years of shared horizons. But it was difficult to escape the creeping conviction that this commemoration -- or celebration? -- means the same thing, to "us", as it does to "them".

One conference devoted to discussions of France and Egypt in the age of the vice-roys (1805-1882), organised by the Institut de Recherches et d'Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman and the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l'Homme, seemed to have side-stepped the whole controversy quite neatly. André Raymond, eminent historian and professor emeritus at the University of Provence, and Daniel Panzac, director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, coordinated the encounter, held at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in the heart of Aix-en-Provence, only a few steps away from the Hôtel de Ville, from 5 to 7 July. The old city was the perfect setting for this meeting, which sought to take stock of an event which remains, if not largely incomprehensible, then certainly a locus of sharp disagreement. Previous conferences had been as clearly partitioned as another rendezvous, 200 years ago. Boycotts and hard feelings were simmering just beneath the surface. No one, then, wanted to exacerbate already raw sensitivities; no one wanted the celebration -- or commemoration? -- to sour.

This conference, then, was to be given as tactful a title as possible. The fateful date was mentioned only in passing. A degree of historical accuracy -- Mohamed Ali, after all, was hardly a khedive -- may have been sacrificed at the altar of friendly relations. Yet some misunderstanding continued to cloud the air. Was it France and Egypt, or France in Egypt? Were the French more interesting, or the Egyptians? Opinions, here as elsewhere, were resolutely divided.

The usual suspects were brought to the fore, tried and found innocent: El-Tahtawi and the Saint-Simonians were among the guests of honour. The root of the problem lay much deeper: the division, while not along national lines, surely sifted out those finding their voice from those who have been accustomed to speaking for two centuries. The ghost of Orientalism, much like that of Banquo, hovered over the proceedings. But what, exactly, was the trial about?

On one side, participants spoke in paradigms. Nelly Hanna, professor of history at the American University in Cairo, suggested that peripheralisation and dependency did not necessarily provide the best theoretical framework for studying the development of the textile industry in Egypt throughout the nineteenth century. A comparison with France, she suggested, could reveal that during times of particularly challenging international competition, reorientation toward internal markets, or the relocation of production from urban to rural centres, were among the strategies adopted by textile producers. Raouf Abbas, professor of history at Cairo University, discussed the impact of the French on the Egyptian educational system under Mohamed Ali and Ismail, indicating that the French imperial concept of a state-guided system to train cadres for public service was adopted by the architects of the Egyptian educational system. Afaf Lutfi El-Sayed Marsot recalled the price Egyptians paid for modernity as it was construed by Mohamed Ali. Amira Sonbol spoke of Clot Bey's reforms and the upheaval they wrought in the traditional medical system.

Common threads ran throughout the fabric of these presentations: the idea that modernity does not necessarily equal improvement, and that Egypt was not virgin territory for the taking, nor yet a country wrenched out of centuries of backwardness by the Napoleonic army, and blinded by the glare of the Enlightenment.

On the other side of the field, contributions were equally varied. For an Egyptian in France, retracing, in some ways, the journey Rifa'a made over a century and a half ago, it seemed at times that the Egyptians were conspicuous mainly for their absence. Jean-Marcel Humbert's paper, originally titled "Egypt's Participation in the Expositions Universelles of Paris in 1867 and 1868", was transformed into a comparison between Mariette's vision of Egypt as an archaeological reality first and foremost, on one hand, and the reconstructions of quite exotic Egypts, the expression of a wider fascination, on the other. Jean Lacouture's paper on Champollion focused on "the pioneer" and his discovery of Egypt. Sarga Moussa spoke at length of the lyricism liberated in Ismail Urbain, a young poet of mixed ancestry from Cayenne, by the Saint-Simonian movement. A series of three papers was devoted to the life and work of Pascal Coste.

In these fascinating contributions, one searched in vain for an Egyptian -- just one. Not a sign, however. Rifa'a was interesting mainly to the extent to which he had observed, absorbed, been bewitched by the French. A paper presented by Anna Piussi on the vanishing of Egypt from early nineteenth-century Paris salons (1800-1830) seemed an apt metaphor, in some ways, for the conference itself. Piussi explained how the intellectual respect which had first greeted Egyptian antiquities, elevated from their status as simple curiosités, did not stretch to contemporary Egyptians, who seemed to vanish from Restoration paintings. This disappearing act seems to be repeating itself.

The contributions situated "on the borders", then, were all the more interesting for their attempt to escape from the oppressive dichotomy. France in Egypt, Egypt in France? Ghislaine Alleaume, notably, spoke of the models mobilised to describe the political regime put in place in the Mohamed Ali era, analysing the values, codes and norms of the system that the transformations of the early 19th century eventually swept away. Three themes -- the despot and the legislator; the politics of princes and that of the state; from empire to nation: Egyptian and Ottoman elites -- formed the three axes of her analysis. Peter Gran, in a paper theoretically devoted to Hassan El-Attar, a Shaykh Al-Azhar who died in 1835, reflected on academic politics and "the view that both Egyptian and French historians have had an investment in the Napoleonic invasion as a watershed, each for their own reasons, that for both, 1798 marks the point of entry of a new type of culture into Egypt..."

Perhaps reflections of this sort, which attempt to elaborate on similarities and differences where none were self-evident -- that is, themes capable of cutting across the easy dualism of French and Egyptian, Egyptian and French -- will provide one of the new directions research can take, when there is nothing left to say of the events and intrigues of the Expedition and its impact. But they are not the only direction -- this much, at least, was abundantly clear by the number and diversity of the papers presented. If anything, the Aix conference showed that the Expedition, as well as the years that preceded and followed it, is still capable of arousing sharp controversies and vivid disagreements but also of bringing together an impressive number of eminent scholars, united by common concerns.