Napoleon's Impact On Egypt

Napoleon whilst appearing to conform to some Egyptian practices did introduce European ideology to the Egyptians. In addition to building infrastructure such as watermills that positively impacted the Egyptians. Any improvements that occurred in Egypt however were merely beneficial for Napoleon and subsequently France. These improvements were made to increase profit and productivity for the Empire. France’s invasion of Egypt was not only the first but also the most overt imperial occupation in the modern period of world history, part of a goal to collect an empire (Said, 1978, p. 42.) Events such as plagues that occurred in Alexandria and the anti-French rebellion that happened in Egypt fragmented the façade of liberation. The political and
It is important to recognize that the end of the French occupation of 1801 did not constitute a “national liberation” but rather the establishment of Ottoman imperial authority (Coller, 2010). However, this time it was different it appeared that the Ottoman power was not capable of filling the vacuum that was created by the absence of a strong leader as the Ottoman power was deteriorating within the Empire. And Egyptians were still far from conceiving their own project of modernity. However, the Egyptians had a different kind of thinking because of that French ‘other’. Despite rejecting French colonialization a new wave of thinking lurked and evolved that would later serve as a foundation for intellectual and literary modernity. (Salama, 2011). Moreover, due to the deteriorating Ottoman power and the ottoman trend of hierarchy of Western educated middle class professionals, enabled Damascus, Acre and Aleppo to be independently ruled and this pattern of independent ruling evolved like a domino effect and appeared in the province of Egypt in the form of Muhammad
The outcome of which was significant, political, economic and social transformations that created a new cultural relationship between Paris and Cairo woven around the rhetoric of the modern nation-state. Ali’s armies and the Muslim rulers after him created new armies according to the French pattern , though this appears to demonstrate a French inspiration provoked by the French invasion, there is a degree of continuity of the way power was constructed in the military domain, from the last years of the eighteenth century up into the early years of the nineteenth century, demonstrating that the interest in the way European created their armies was an interest that preceded Muhammad Ali. For instance, Ali Bey imported modern weapons and employed Europeans to manage them. Later the Mamluk Beys followed his example; Murad Bey for instance employed Greeks to build up his artillery (Bierman, 2003). Therefore way to modernize the army occurred before Muhammad Ali was in power. Muhammad Ali’s military corps consisted of slaves from Sudan, mamluks, peasants and mercenaries who were trained and organized into regiments along French lines by a former French officer, “Colonel” de Seve (Bierman, 2003). This clearly demonstrates that his actions were a degree of continuity with what came before. As both Peter Gran and Afaf