Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

220 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTFrench occupation. The playwright Laus de Boissy later inserted into CaptainSay’s memoirs his own hopes for a pro-French Jewish “colony” in “Jerusalem,”which he saw as potentially useful for the French in Egypt. He first published itin the spring of 1799 in the Decade Philosophique (Philosophical Weekly), themagazine of a group that called themselves “The Ideologues,” to which Bonapartewas close.The establishment of the French in Egypt and in Syria could be a joyous epochfor the Jewish nation; to receive and welcome the Jews at Jerusalem would perhapsbe a means to make them more useful and happier. The Jews, dispersed inthree parts of the world, could, in forming a flourishing colony there, also powerfullyaid the colonization of Egypt by the French. The Jews are accused ofmany vices, but these vices come from the oppression under which they groan,and the Jews have virtues that we lack in our civilization and in our power.Docile sons, faithful wives, tender fathers, they profess equality, practice hospitalityand fraternity toward all of their own; they are sober, hardworking, economical,disciplined, patient, industrious. There are no men on the earth whospend less or do more, who know better the miracle of savings and that of work.Born businessmen, with links to all the nations, they can serve with all andagainst all. Rich in capital, they can offer it to those who restore to them theiroriginal territory. One can say of the Jewish people what one says of sex: Theirvirtues are from them, their vices are from us. The conqueror of Egypt knowsso well how to evaluate men that he will never mistake the advantage that hecan draw from this people, in the execution of his vast designs. 35Laus de Boissy’s configuring of Ottoman Jerusalem as the “original territory” ofEuropean Jews had the effect of exoticizing them, and, for all his left-handedcompliments, of declaring them out of place in Paris and Rome. There were atthat time only a few thousand Jews in geographical Palestine, far too few to beof any practical use to Bonaparte’s colonial designs, and, as we have seen withthe Copts, it cannot in any case be assumed that they would naturally give theirloyalty to a European power over their own Ottoman government.We cannot assume that Bonaparte shared Laus de Boissy’s views, thoughsince the latter was in Josephine’s salon, he was almost certainly aware of them.There is no good evidence that he supported any such project himself, but it isclear that the French colonization of Egypt did provoke some in his circle tobegin thinking about a modern sort of Zionist nationalism that configured EuropeanJews as useful to imperialism, that urged their displacement to the dustyvillages of Palestine, and that sought to use their supposed financial and commercialpower for imperial purposes. 36