Napoleon in Egypt by Paul Strathern Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Napoleon in Egypt
Book Review: Flawed Perfection
Summary: 3 Stars
This is an exceptionally well done book. The scope of this work is on the mark. It describes the political, military, and scientific aspects of the expedition, giving each aspect its due. It also adroitly covers the other players in the story: the Egyptians, their Mameluke overlords, the Ottoman Empire, and the British Navy.
It offers food for thought on Napoleon's motivations concerning the expedition as well as later after be became ruler of France. There are also insights regarding interactions between westerners and middle eastern people which, depending on your point of view, may have application to the present.
All of the information is relayed in logical, smooth flowing prose that is a pleasure to read. Detracting from this pleasure are errors of fact/terminology that create doubt about the author's accuracy. In addition to errors of fact cited by other reviewers, I would like to point out two:
* Providing background between Egypt and Europe, the author writes "...the charms of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, proved irresistible first to Julius Caesar and then to Mark Antony, while rivalry between these two ambitious men plunged the Roman Empire into civil war." (pp. 7 & 8). False. Mark Antony was a loyal adherent of Julius Caesar and was one of his most trusted lieutenants. There was no rivalry leading to war between these two men. After Julius Caesar was assassinated, there was a rivalry between Mark Antony and Octavian (later Augustus) which resulted in civil war. The author's confusing Julius Caesar with Octavian is a salient error given this is basic history.
* On page 88 the author writes, "...he supervised the 200 men of his platoon in setting up their camp,...". I don't believe that a platoon comprised 200 men. Platoons are much smaller. This misapplication of basic terminology calls into question the author's ability to accurately assess the military memoirs that are his sources.
It's disappointing that a book that seems to be so well researched contains such fundamental errors that a reader is led to question its overall accuracy. The storytelling is superb but the history is sloppy.
Book Review: High Adventure!
Summary: 5 Stars
The author conveys the drama and adventure of the young Napoleon and his army in Egypt. The prose can't help but grip the reader, even a reader who knows the outcome of the stories, battles and adventures will keep turning pages.
The author describes and documents his take on Napoleon's motives and the political pressures on him. He describes how he acquired his resources, refreshingly with facts and explanations. (The financial end of campaigns is often generalized in this type of narrative.) He follows the chronology of events with a few fittingly placed interludes that span time that give a flavor of the daily life in Cairo. He describes some of the interpersonal differences and loyalties and in the end summarizes what happened to the survivors later in their lives.
By describing how the taxes were collected, how Beys paid their tributes, how "justice" was meted, how trade was insecure and thereby constrained, Strathern showed not just how the Mameluke system worked, but also how Egypt related to the Ottoman Empire.
A few reviewers have noted inaccuracies but none of these will be memorable or relevant to the general reader and none changes my overall response to the work. Paul Strathern can write and bring to life the drama, tragedy and significance of the short incursion.
I highly recommend this book for general readers of history.
Book Review: Lively account
Summary: 5 Stars
I enjoyed every page of this superb history. In excellent, entertaining prose we are given the reasons and context for this strange expedition, the many personalities involved, and their adventures on the way to Egypt (where they miss being intercepted by the British navy by one day!) We are then treated to a blow-by-blow account of the military encounters and political machinations that ensued on the part of Napoleon, his generals, the feeble French goverment back home, the Mamelukes, the Turks, the British, and Egypt's neighbors. The aftermath and consequences of all this are satisfyingly, often shrewdly, dealt with. This expedition eerily foreshadowed the rest of Napoleon's career. But this is not all - there are the many scientists and "savants" which Napoleon brought with him, and their groundbreaking discoveries which began Egyptology as we know it. There are wonderful accounts of daily life in Cairo at the time and the local Muslim point of view. (Another fascination for me was that reading this book, I could not help but think of the recent ill-advised U.S. invasion of Iraq, whose organizers hoped to be greeted as liberators and spreaders of enlightened government, but were instead scorned as interfering invaders by many.) This book is full of amusing details. I couldn't ask for a more clear, engaging account of this inherently interesting subject.Book Review: Napoleon on the Nile
Summary: 4 Stars
Competently told from a Western perspective, Mr. Strathern's book provides a general overview of the famous invasion in 1798 by the French of Egypt, a harsh landscape then dominated by Mamelukes, Janissaries and Bedouins and studded with stunning relics of forgotten peoples. With military, religious, and scientific aspects, this event, organized and led by Napoleon Bonaparte, was a true clash of civilizations.
Those who may still admire, if not revere, Napoleon must pause and reflect on such inexcusable atrocities as his cold-blooded order to murder some 4,000 prisoners of war after a battle in the Syrian campaign.
While I assume other as good or better histories of this pivotal adventure exist, I did find this workman-like effort by Paul Strathern superior to a similar one I read by Juan Cole, entitled "Napoleon's Egypt" (2007).
Book Review: The Devil is in the Details
Summary: 3 Stars
It's the careless statements about collateral details which cast doubt on the accuracy of the main narrative. For example:
page 7: Alexander's "body was brought back to Alexandria to be buried in a magnificent tomb, made of gold and glass". Not the tomb. The original coffin was made of gold and later replaced by Ptolemy X about 89 BC with one of glass (or, more likely, translucent calcite).
page 79: "Dolomieu ... discovered a seven-ton stone sarcophagus covered in hieroglyphs which he took to be the long-lost tomb of Alexander the Great. ... Several decades later this sarcophagus would be identified as that of Nectanebo I". Actually Nectanebo II. (The author might have given us the sequel: that is, the rumour that Napoleon had wanted to be buried in the sarcophagus of his hero, Alexander, and so had it sent off to France in 1801. But the ship was captured by the British and the sarcophagus ended up in the British Museum.)
page 56: "Nelson ... was a battle-scared veteran, having lost his right eye leading his men ashore at Corsica". Not quite. He lost the "sight" of his right eye not the eyeball. (He never wore an eye-patch.)
page 136: Cairo's police chief, Barthelemy, is described as being "habitually dressed in a large white turban". This is unlikely as he was "a Greek Christian". In the Ottoman Empire, only Moslems were allowed to wear white turbans. Greeks had to wear blue and Jews yellow turbans.
page 160: "Nelson watched from the "Vanguard" as the sun sank behind the fort at the end of the Aboukir peninsula..." and the author then goes on to describe a great deal of the "Battle of the Nile" until "around eight p.m." as if the conflict had taken place in the dark. In fact, at Alexandria on August 1, sunset does not occur until 19:56 and twilight lasts until 20:22. The author could have found this out by simply consulting a nautical almanac or a web site. "Just before ten p.m." the French flagship "L'Orient" blew up (at just an hour-and-a-half into the night).
page 166 footnote: "the American poet Felicia Hemans". She was born in Liverpool, lived in Wales and England, and died in Dublin. She never set foot in America. As well as "Casabianca" ("The boy stood on the burning deck ...") she wrote the equally lackluster (and erroneous) poem "The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England" which was drummed into American school children until the 1950s. Perhaps that's why the author thinks she was "American".
page 185: "Desaix and his division began heading south down the Nile." Rather, "up the Nile" as it flows from south to north. (The same disorientation on pages 278, 286.)
page 389: "This black basalt slab... known as the Rosetta Stone." Actually "granite".
page 411: The author tells us that both Kléber and Desaix were killed "on the very same day". But two dates are given: 18 June for Desaix at Marengo in Italy (on page 408) and 24 June for Kléber in Cairo (on page 411). Both dates are wrong. The two generals died on 14 June 1800.
page 425: The Napoleonic bee emblem "was copied directly from the hieroglyph of an ancient Egyptian temple" and designed by Denon according to the author. No source is given for this intriguing bit of Egyptomania. The Napoleonic bee emblem looks nothing like the Egyptian bee hieroglyph and is generally thought to have been derived from Charlemagne's recreated regalia used for Napoleon's coronation.
page 429 note 1: "Different sources give Napoleon's height as anything between five foot two and five foot eight." The author forgets to tell us that there were English feet and French feet in use at the time. The French foot (pied du roi) was bigger than the English foot. Thus, 5' 2" in French measurements is about 5' 7" in English measurements. Both measurements equal about 1.7 metres.
I read a library copy of the British Jonathan Cape 2007 hardcover edition (ISBN 978-0224076814) which has the worst sort of glued binding (where the pages just fall out). The dust cover has a reproduction of Jean-Léon Gérôme's fanciful 1867 painting called "Napoleon and his General Staff in Egypt".
I found "Boneparte in Egypt" by J. Christopher Herold, first published in 1962 and reprinted as a paperback in 2005 (ISBN 978-1844152858), to be a better alternative.