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

248 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTEastern resistance, however, cannot capture the full complexity of these relationships.Successful imperialists are by definition dominant, but the discourseof the conquered subject is not without its own cultural power. 10 How to makesense of Bonaparte’s defense of the Prophet Muhammad from Voltaire, orSheikh ‘Abdullah al-Sharqawi’s approval of the French introduction of governingcouncils in the Egyptian provinces? The contradictory detail of the memoirs,recounted in this book, suggests that in order to understand colonialismwe must appreciate the mutual appropriation of cultural forms by colonizedand colonizer.Still, the major conflicts between the French and the Egyptians were notdriven by culture but by contests over power and resources, cleverly reworkedby Bonaparte into a rhetorical battle between liberty and fanaticism. Whichside championed which with more fervor became murkier and murkier as timewent on.