6

Egypt: Orientalism and

Modernisation

In 1833 about 40 ‘Enfantinists’ travelled to Egypt, and others joined

them in the following months. They were disenchanted by the recep-
tion their ideas had met in France and were ostensibly searching for ‘the
mother’ in the Orient. Egypt had been made a fashionable destination
by the publication in the 1820s of accounts of Napoleon’s 1798 expedi-
tion. The Saint-Simonians’ shortage of money soon made their quest more
practical.1

Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt

During the eighteenth century the declining control of the Ottomans over
their extensive empire stimulated European ambitions in both Egypt and
North Africa. At first the French had merely thought of Egypt as a stepping
stone to the Far East. In 1784 French engineers set up a military engineer-
ing school there. Napoleon launched an expedition to Egypt to challenge
Britain’s growing influence. He hoped that Egypt would replace the empire
France had lost. In addition he also asserted, unlike earlier French colonis-
ers elsewhere, that his objectives were to emancipate and civilise the region
and to liberate Muslims.2 This was the beginning of what was to become
the ambiguous and much disputed notion of France’s colonial ‘civilising
mission’.
Along with Napoleon’s regiments went scientific experts. Among the 151
military officers were engineers, geometrists, geographers, mineralogists,
natural scientists, mathematicians, artists and astronomers. They included
40 students and professors from the École Polytechnique. It was the first
time the École had been deployed as an active military unit.3 There were
no archaeologists or experts on antiquities. To prepare themselves, during
the crossing to Egypt both scientists and officers read Herodotus and the
ancient geographers. Their main purpose was to survey and map territory

104
P. Pilbeam, Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France
© Pamela Pilbeam 2013
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 105

which Napoleon assumed would be swiftly occupied by his troops and made
part of France.
Napoleon set up an Egyptian Institute in Cairo, where French research on
the area could be discussed and communicated to Paris. They talked about
literature and the arts, as well as physics, maths and political economy.
Officer scholars gave papers to fellow members of the expedition, mostly
related to the economic potential of the region. The local elite, with the
exception of a tiny number of scientists, was unsurprisingly hostile. The
French published a newspaper, but only in French. Only two of the French
experts were Orientalists; the rest knew no Arabic. Napoleon started to learn
Arabic4 and expressed sympathy with Islam. His experts began to research
the geography, mineralogy, flora and fauna, and, finding abundant antiqui-
ties, they began to sketch and note details of them with great enthusiasm.
Their research was restricted to the parts of Egypt Napoleon considered
strategically significant.5
The military expedition was repulsed by Nelson and a combined force of
British and Turkish troops. By 1801 the French troops had gone, but the
expedition’s research continued. The French refused to share their research
notes with the British on grounds of security. Napoleon would not release
their detailed maps. These were not published until 1818. Napoleon’s mil-
itary failure gave his experts the freedom to explore ancient Egypt. Their
published volumes gave a very different picture of Egypt from that originally
envisaged. They focused on natural history, antiquities, topography and con-
temporary political systems. Four of the first nine volumes of the resulting
Description de l’Égypte covered antiquities, as did half of the exquisitely exe-
cuted plates.6 Ancient Egypt was presented as the birthplace of modern
civilisation, as the flattering antecedent of Napoleon’s own authoritarian
empire.7 The frontispiece of the Description shows Napoleon as ‘Caesar’
alongside the pyramids, pushing aside the Mamluks, with a line of Greek
Muses in the rear.8 These volumes became the standard source of detailed
scholarly information on the area for generations of Europeans.
Napoleon’s team mapped huge tracts of Africa and the Middle East for
the first time. The volumes offered a compelling blend of statistical and sci-
entific information, with details of the archaeology, history and culture of
past civilisations. The French engineers were obviously impressed by the
survival of superb artefacts, which they recorded with plentiful and often
elegant drawings. Their own classical training meant they were versed in
Greek and Latin, and so they relied on earlier ancient Greek and Roman
texts, plus more recent travellers’ accounts. Ancient pharaonic civilisation,
which had been neglected by subsequent Muslim conquerors, was rediscov-
ered and explored. The French experts’ initial ignorance of Arabic meant
they could not read the accounts of former civilisations in the region which
had been written by medieval Muslim scholars.9 Nor could they appreci-
ate the scientific and cultural achievements of the earlier Muslim Empire.
106 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

Napoleon’s experts regarded the existing Muslim populations as barbarians,

in desperate need of French civilising treatment.

The Orient

The French, along with other Europeans, became entranced by what they
called the Orient.10 The interpretation created by the Napoleonic Description
was reinforced by contemporary Romantic artistic and literary dreams of the
Orient. What Europeans meant by the Orient at this time was geographically
vague, ranging from China (a seventeenth-century enthusiasm) to north-
west Africa (their nineteenth-century discovery). Greece was included, and
in the 1820s the Saint-Simonians joined Byron and others in concern for
the integrity of a Greek state. For some the ‘Orient’ was a cultural passion;
for others it was a cloak for basic economic or colonial greed. This obsession
was later dismissed by Edward Said in his influential post-colonial survey of
Orientalism, as crude colonial acquisitiveness and cultural superiority ‘dom-
inating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient’. More recent
commentators have taken the view that Said’s approach was itself limited
by crude anti-colonialism.11 However fair this verdict on Said may be, in the
early nineteenth century Orientalism was a potent mix of the economic and
cultural ambitions and fantasies of educated, prosperous Europeans, includ-
ing the Saint-Simonians. They undoubtedly considered their own culture
superior, and the subjugation and exploitation of less developed territories
was never far from their thoughts.12
Europe became entranced by the ancient pharaonic civilisation depicted
with loving artistry by Napoleon’s experts. Romantic artists embraced
Orientalism with a passion. Egypt became part of the itinerary of painters
and poets such as Shelley. To great acclaim, Victor Hugo described an Ori-
ent he never visited.13 Flaubert sent the hero of his Éducation sentimentale
to Egypt and together with Maxime Du Camp spent eight months trav-
elling down the Nile in 1849–1850.14 To satisfy the craving for Oriental
art, Egyptian antiquities were shipped to London and Paris in monumen-
tal quantities. Egyptian notables did not value them and were happy to see
them go, until they began to realise the value put on them by Europeans.
In London an Egyptian Hall was constructed in Piccadilly in 1817, while
an obelisk presented to Charles X by Mehemet-Ali was erected in the Place
de Concorde in Paris in 1836.15 By the mid-nineteenth century the Louvre
had amassed the largest collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts and the
most knowledgeable experts in Europe. French perceptions of Oriental cul-
ture were also influenced by travellers’ tales, redolent with sexual fantasy.
So many Europeans visited Egypt, particularly French and British, that a
traveller to the ‘Orient’ became a stock pantomime character.16 Western per-
ceptions and representations of what was the Orient and the nature of Islam
were sketchy and often contradictory, a mix of high art and sexual arts, a
blend of the pyramids and the harem.
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 107

Mehemet-Ali and modernisation

Mehemet-Ali (1770–1849) was viceroy of Egypt from 1805, still under

nominal Ottoman control. The Albanian-born Mehemet-Ali started as a mer-
cenary in an Ottoman army, staffed with some British officers who were
commissioned to drive the French from Egypt.17 Acknowledged as governor
and pasha by the sultan, Mehemet-Ali set to work to exploit European fasci-
nation with his country and with Orientalism. He played on Anglo-French
rivalries in particular to secure cheap foreign engineering and free technical
education in Paris and London, not to mention European diplomatic sup-
port in his struggles with his Ottoman overlords. He was keen to extend
his lands and develop the economy.18 In the early nineteenth century Egypt
became a significant exporter of cotton, indigo, sugar and other goods to
Europe.
Mehemet-Ali was aware that modernisation would mean opening up his
country to European scientific and economic knowledge. He founded an
Egyptian school in Paris, a mirror image of Napoleon’s Cairo Institute. It was
designed to educate a new ruling elite of administrators, engineers and mili-
tary officers. The French welcomed the enterprise. In 1825 the first batch of
students arrived, to learn about European science and culture at first hand.
The viceroy had to remind them they were there to study, not to enjoy
themselves. However, study did not mean conversion. Mehemet-Ali had no
intention that either he or his students should be ‘civilised’ to adopt French,
or any other European, culture.
Mehemet-Ali’s students showed no interest in the Description volumes
which were appearing to considerable acclaim while they were in Paris. Even
Rifa’a Rafi’al-Tahatawi (1801–73), one of the first students to be educated in
Paris and subsequently an outstanding influence on the modernisation of
Egypt, made no reference to them in the journal he kept while he was in
Paris. Yet his studies were supervised by the engineer Edmé-François Jomard
(1777–1862), who was one of the main editors of the Napoleonic Descrip-
tion. The final volume appeared while Rifa’a was in Paris, but he did not
even take a copy home. At the time the elites in Egypt were mostly not
of local origin and were ignorant of Egyptian history before the period of
Muslim dominance. They regarded the ancient pharaonic period as one of
idolatry and superstition. A multi-volume French eulogy of this lost civil-
isation had no appeal. However, the Egyptian students who spent time in
Paris soon learned to appreciate the financial value of their pharaonic inher-
itance. Rifa’a protested when Mehemet-Ali presented the Luxor obelisk to
Louis-Philippe.19
The Egyptian students made a big impact on Restoration Paris. The arrival
of a giraffe, a gift from Mehemet-Ali although not a native animal in Egypt,
helped create veritable Egyptomania. Rifa’a was tutored in most subjects
by a polytechnicien, who, incidentally, knew the Saint-Simonians, and who
wrote a glowing report of his progress.20 Rifa’a’s memoir of his five-year stay
108 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

was very discreet on politics, although critical of the position of women in

French society. In 1832 he was shocked that the duchesse de Berry, while
trying to stir up legitimist sentiments in western France, gave birth to an
illegitimate child in prison.
Successive groups of students from Egypt were introduced to a variety of
subjects in Paris. All learned the language and received military training.
Some studied medicine, some undertook naval training. Most spent four to
five years in Paris, and a number married French girls. At its peak in the early
1830s there were 150 of them at the school. Although they and compatri-
ots who also studied in other European countries never shaped the Egyptian
elite as Mehemet-Ali had hoped, they were a substantial presence. Some were
there just for the fun, some became subversives back home, but most con-
tributed to mutual understanding between their two countries. The project
continued. In 1870 there were 24 Egyptians studying in Paris and another
50 elsewhere in Europe.

Saint-Simonians discover the Orient

Saint-Simon had considered Islam barbaric, although he was aware of the

economic potential of Egypt. In 1825 Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui (1798–1854),
then a young political economist writing in the first volume of the Saint-
Simonian Le Producteur,21 noted that trade with Egypt would be beneficial
for the French. He also praised Napoleon’s plans for a Suez Canal. Enfantin
only began to consider the possibilities of the Orient at the end of 1831.
His rapid conversion seemed almost a smokescreen to divert members away
from their own schism and towards a topic that was of huge contempo-
rary interest. In their newspaper Le Globe Enfantin rather vaguely compared
the ongoing social problems in France with the greater opportunities of the
Orient. He speculated that the Orient was unsullied by the social problems
and cleavages from which France and the rest of the West was suffer-
ing. He suggested that there were similarities between their own reforming
creed and Oriental culture. Enfantin slotted the Orient into a dialectical
approach which he and other members of the sect may have learned from
Hegel. He set out contrasting Orients. He envisaged a materialist Orient,
which was Jewish and Arab, and a spiritual Orient, which he thought was
Indian, Persian and Chinese.22 He transposed his contentious arguments
about male–female relations and the dialectical juxtaposition of flesh and
spirit to make a further comparison. Urging a closer relationship between
the West and the Orient, he likened the Orient to the flesh, the West to the
spirit: ‘The LAW is the PROGRESSIVE harmonisation of flesh and spirit, of
industry and science, of the Orient and the West, of woman and man.’23 He
claimed that a harmonious synthesis could be secured from these opposing
theses, in which man and the West were superior, the Orient and woman
inferior.
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 109

Enfantin’s metaphorical representation of the Orient was somewhat novel,

but it was built on contemporary French obsessions with the sexual attrac-
tions and presumed availability of Oriental women, both Jewish and
Muslim. Such sexual titillation was common, including in Victor Hugo’s Les
Orientales (1829). Napoleon’s officers had waxed lyrical on the sexual attrac-
tions of Egyptian girls, sometimes as young as 14. Their memoirs painted
images of welcoming harems and brothels, full of nubile young girls, willing
to provide more passionate sex than French women. Thus ‘Oriental’ sexual
tourism was born.
In January 1832 Barrault elaborated the Saint-Simonian vision in two long
articles in Le Globe, ‘L’Orient et L’Occident’. He described the age-old conflict
between the Orient and the West. The Orient was the cradle of civilisation
and the flowering of man’s ‘material existence’. Its destiny was in science and
material development on a colossal scale. The Orient contributed nothing
to the world of the spirit. Barrault accepted Enfantin’s notions on dialec-
tical partnership, so for Barrault the materialism of the Orient confirmed
its femininity. Like woman, the Orient was prodigiously fertile, its islands
were voluptuous and irresistibly seductive. It was the cradle of civilisation.
This posed a threat to the West, which risked being overwhelmed by the
carnal charms of the Orient. The West, influenced first by Socrates, then by
Christianity, embraced an essentially spiritual culture, by means of which it
escaped both the initial servitude of creation and the clutches of the Ori-
ent. Like man and woman, the West and the Orient had been rivals for
power since the Crusades until Napoleon’s expedition, which offered a help-
ing hand to a ‘new people’. Napoleon’s army brought the glories of French
science, civilisation and universal tolerance to Egypt.24
This interpretation, which assumed Western superiority, would have been
familiar to contemporaries. The contribution of the medieval Arab empire
to scientific discoveries had been largely forgotten because their works had
never been translated. Barrault’s vague hyperbole about the massive mate-
rial culture of the Orient was curious, given the rapid industrialisation in
the West in the early nineteenth century compared with an Orient that
now survived through subsistence agriculture, struggling to develop a mar-
ket economy as a primary producer of cotton and other goods for Western
industry. Barrault had nothing to say about this stark contrast. However,
unlike others, the Saint-Simonians did not assume that a new relation-
ship between the West and the Orient would be permanently unequal.
They expected that the West would colonise the Orient, which Barrault
described as a peaceful ‘new crusade’, in which soldiers and merchants would
be more dominant than the Christian church. The Orient would benefit,
and the result would be a blend of ‘spirit’ and ‘flesh’, a ‘solemn marriage’
and a ‘sublime accord’ between the West and the Orient. Reading Barrault,
one can sympathise with Edward Said’s criticisms of Western views of the
Orient.25
110 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

However, what was more specific about the Saint-Simonian Orient, was
their perception of the economic and strategic potential of the area. Michel
Chevalier built on Blanqui’s earlier comments on Egypt in four articles in
Le Globe in February 1832. These were re-issued immediately as a pam-
phlet and subsequently became a respected and influential view. Chevalier
claimed that the main conflict in the world was between the Orient and the
West, with the Mediterranean frequently the main battleground. Instead it
could be turned into the ‘nuptial bed of the Orient and the West’. France
should create a universal association among the powers in the area. He
enthused about a new ‘Mediterranean system’, an economic and spiritual
entity, which would blend Europe and the Orient. The Orient, he argued,
was one aspect of the face of the Almighty, part of the spiritual and material
world. The material aspect of the new association would start with railways,
which he saw as a defining symbol of universal association, linking the
entire Mediterranean, and reaching out to create a network which would also
include Great Britain and Russia. Key towns would be identified in each of
the ‘gulfs’ of the Mediterranean to provide the nuclei for these links. Rouen
and Le Havre would become like suburbs of Paris. The system would reach
into Asia and America. Canals would be cut through Suez and Panama, con-
necting the oceans. Add steam boats and the telegraph, and eventually it
would be possible to have a single government for the whole area. The Ori-
ent would develop industrially, Europe would be a hub of investment. For
Chevalier the growth of international banking would be the spiritual aspect
of the union, which would lead to world harmony.26 He estimated that the
cost of his projected rail network would be 18,000 million francs and noted
that Britain had spent far more on her recent war against France.27
Economic cooperation would bring not only growth but also world peace,
already anticipated by Enfantin.28 Chevalier’s thesis loudly proclaimed that
the sect had moved away from feminist and socialist reform, towards indus-
trial politics. A few days later Duveyrier emphasised this transformation. The
way out of the current crisis and unemployment, Duveyrier stressed, was
to get bankers to finance railways, notably Le Havre–Marseille and Paris–
Lyon.29 Leading Saint-Simonians belonged to banking families and some,
such as the Pereire brothers, were bankers and becoming kings of railway.
It is probably not by chance that this emphasis on ‘industrial politics’ was
published as the police were closing down the Saint-Simonian headquarters.
To acquire a respectable image and raise funds for their own survival, the
Saint-Simonians needed to show that their ideas were not subversive and
would promote economic prosperity and end worker unrest, such as that in
Lyon in November 1831.
Chevalier continued to enlarge on his ideas for the development of the
Mediterranean and wrote to the Pereires from prison urging them that the
Egyptian ruler should be encouraged to negotiate a loan of up to 100 million
francs from the Rothschilds to build railways and modernise industry in
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 111

Egypt and Syria.30 Chevalier’s ‘Mediterranean system’ was taken up by

entrepreneurs a few years later, when they began to invest in Algeria. What
Chevalier did not mention, because to him it would have been so obvious,
was that French leadership would be facilitated by language; French was the
main European language of cultural and commercial exchange.
In early 1832, for all these fine words, the Saint-Simonians were no
nearer to defining the geography of the Orient. They variously referred
to Homer and the Trojan horse, to the Crusades, to Bonaparte and to a
search for utopia. As the sect splintered, those who broke most completely
with Enfantin and who soon became openly republican put their hopes for
reform and regeneration in France itself, only retaining a belief in a vaguely
defined spiritual Orient. Leroux and Reynaud identified this Orient as India
and Persia, which they considered the birthplace of Western civilisation.
Rigaud thought they might find their female leader in the Himalayas.31 The
Enfantinists, including Rodrigues and d’Eichthal, finally agreed that their
Orient was Egypt. Judaism was seen as a route to the Orient.32

Mission to Egypt

While the leaders were in prison, Barrault tried to mobilise the Enfantinists.
He defined 1833 as the ‘year of the mother’. He published a volume of
Enfantin’s recent writings under this title, in which Enfantin wrote, ‘I can
hear, from the depths of my prison, that the Orient is awakening and is
no longer singing, but weeping. I can see that the standard of the Prophet
is filthy and torn.’33 Although all former Saint-Simonians remembered the
project to find their female leader, some, including Chevalier, thought she
might be in North America rather than the Orient, perhaps because it was
seen as a ‘new world’ or because the USA had a republican democratic con-
stitution. Chevalier’s new geographical orientation may have been merely
a professional convenience. Duveyrier also refused to go to Egypt, claiming
he was no hero: ‘I’m looking out for myself, becoming an egoist; I want to
make my way in the world.’34
Barrault was concerned that the sect was disintegrating and they had
no money. Small groups wandered around France visiting former Saint-
Simonians, trying to rekindle enthusiasm and cash. Barrault attempted to
increase interest in the movement among the radical silk workers in Lyon,
but they were more worried about unemployment and the reduced price
they were receiving for finished silk. Then Barrault focused on their spiritual
quest for their female leader. He wrote a song for his followers, and Félicien
David (1810–1876) composed the music.

People give homage to the WOMAN

Let joy replace weeping
Cast aside your cursed yoke
112 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

Let your hands tear away the irons.

Gentle, majestic and beautiful
She will bless you with her goodness
Peace will march before her
She is the angel of liberty.35

This ditty was soon superseded by a snappier verse Enfantin sent to Barrault
from his prison.

SUEZ
Is the focus of our Life
This will show the world
That we are
Male

The members of the quest envisaged Egypt as the utopia where their dreams
could be realised, rather as the 1960s’ hippies, also disillusioned with the
West, took off for India. As graduates of the École Polytechnique and former
army officer and engineers, they followed Napoleon. They noted that the
pyramids indicated the advanced technology of the ancient Egyptians.36 In a
curious way the pyramids were also defined as a spiritual clue to finding
their female leader. This association between the pyramids and women had
echoes of the Knights Templar sect. In their white robes some of them even
fantasised about a new crusade, which sat ill with Enfantin’s advice to study
the Koran and show respect for Islam.
A total of 80 Saint-Simonians eventually set sail, in three main parties.
Barrault led the first group. He claimed to have had a vision of the ‘mother’
being a Jewess, living in Egypt. They left Marseille on 22 March, the equinox,
chosen apparently because it was the symbol of sexual equality. They quar-
relled bitterly during the voyage, partly over lack of money.37 They landed
first in Constantinople, where apparently their incessant polite doffing of
their berets to every woman they met alarmed local people; women in public
were meant to pretend that men were invisible. The Saint-Simonians were
obliged to move on. They met up with two other groups, primarily artists
and musicians. At the end of July the incarcerated leaders were granted a
royal pardon, perhaps an indication that the Orleanist regime considered
them more an embarrassment than a threat to public morality. Enfantin and
five of his most loyal followers – Holstein, Fournel, Lambert, Ollivier and
Petit – immediately set off for Egypt. By October 1833 the various groups
were assembled in Alexandria. In November two wives, Cécile Fournel and
Clorinde Rogé (1807–1857), joined them. Suzanne Voilquin and a small
number of other women arrived later.
Their arrival was propitious. In May the Peace of Kütayah had brought
a temporary break in Egypt’s foreign wars. Their first contacts were with
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 113

the consul, Ferdinand de Lesseps, and the established French community,

composed of engineers and naval officers and their families. Some had rela-
tives living locally; Adolphe Rigaud, a doctor, stayed with his cousin Joseph,
who ran the European hospital. A not insubstantial French community
had grown up since 1798, the nucleus of which was a group of engineers,
recruited by Mehemet-Ali. Captain Caviglia, a retired naval officer, a member
of the Illuminati, a sect related to the Knights Templar, was very welcoming.
Local Freemasons let them hold their first meeting in their lodge and invited
them to dinner. An English resident, Lady Stanhope, welcomed Urbain and
helped them visit Syria. They provided cash as well as initial hospitality. The
Saint-Simonians had to appeal to friends in France to pay for their voyage
and buy their equipment. Arlès-Dufour was a major contributor. Urbain’s
father financed him, despite his dislike of the sect. Urbain did not tell him
where they were bound and did not dare mention that he had used his cash
for yet another new Saint-Simonian uniform.38
Their most important contacts were Linant de Bellefonds and Soliman-
Pacha, formerly Colonel Sève, two friendly Frenchmen who had converted
to the Muslim faith. They were crucial in subsequent Saint-Simonian activ-
ity. Linant de Bellefonds (1799–1883), a French naval officer, established
himself in Egypt in 1818, where he worked for two British African explo-
ration societies and published several books about their expeditions. Since
1830 he had been employed by the Egyptian government as an engineer
on hydraulic projects. Enfantin always described him as a ‘disciple’, but this
was an exaggeration.39 He was to cooperate closely with the Saint-Simonians
and shared some, though not all, of their ideas.40 Sève was a close collabora-
tor with Mehemet-Ali, who made him a general. Sève had had a chequered
naval career in France, being condemned for insubordination, after which
he adopted a false identity. He fled France because of his indebtedness and
because he was involved in a conspiracy to save Marshal Ney after the
Hundred Days. He eventually settled in Egypt, adopted the title of colonel
and won the confidence of Mehemet-Ali.
Without their help the Saint-Simonians would have been unable to sur-
vive. The imprisonment of their leaders had created a bad impression. They
needed to shine in a major venture to restore their reputations. Mehemet-
Ali refused to meet Enfantin. Fournel, the engineer with the most renown,
was delegated to take the lead, along with Lambert, another highly qualified
and experienced engineer. Cutting off their flowing ‘apostolic’ beards, and
laying aside their Saint-Simonian outfits in favour of their engineers’ formal
uniform, they met the Egyptian ministers. Armed with Fournel’s detailed
calculations, they tried to persuade the Egyptian ministers to adopt new
engineering projects.41 Fournel wrote to the Pasha about two projects the
Egyptians were negotiating with the British: a railway from Suez to Cairo
and a barrage to facilitate more efficient irrigation during the Nile’s flooding
season. In mid-November Fournel met Boghos Bey, the Foreign Minister, to
114 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

discuss the railway scheme and the possible exploitation of mines in Syria,
which the Egyptian army had recently invaded. There was fierce competi-
tion between British and French for all the three projects. The British had
the edge in the railway scheme because they could supply the rails. Linant
was already engaged in drafting a barrage project. It was a huge scheme, in
which Linant expected to employ thousands of men. Fournel and Barrault
established relations with Linant, keeping Enfantin, who did not seem to be
taking the projects seriously, well out of sight. Linant agreed to find work for
some of the Saint-Simonians, and there was a fairly unsuccessful attempt to
recruit more engineers in France.
Mehemet-Ali needed experts. He was bent on political aggrandisement to
satisfy his own ambitions and provide for his large family. He had 30 chil-
dren, including 17 sons, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Extending
his territory, acquiring Syria and securing independence were vital. He was
also aware of the value of economic modernisation. He was keen to promote
export crops such as rice, cotton, indigo, sesame and groundnuts but was
aware, after several years of drought, that improved irrigation of the Nile was
vital. The French engineers he consulted disagreed on the best solution, and
Linant was given the job of investigating the relative merits of the various
projects.

Egyptian attitudes to the Saint-Simonians

Mehemet-Ali had no interest in the Saint-Simonian quest for a spiritual

female leader. Women had no part in public life in Egypt. More shocking
to the local elite was the ‘liberated’ sexual behaviour of both female and
male members. Their white and red uniforms and new huge metal neck-
laces, clanking with a variety of Masonic-style symbols, seemed absurd to
Egyptians. Enfantin tried to interest Egyptian officials in a canal linking the
Mediterranean and Red Seas. He was convinced that a canal avoiding the
long and dangerous sea route via South Africa would have global signifi-
cance. It would be the biggest engineering project of the time and would
help bring countries and different civilisations together. Henri Fournel, their
most senior engineer, shared Enfantin’s dream. He became obsessed with the
idea of a canal and soon interested the French consul, Ferdinand de Lesseps.
Mehemet-Ali dismissed their enthusiasm for a canal, which he feared
would give Europeans unwanted access and influence over Egyptian affairs.42
However, he seized the opportunity to make free, or very cheap, use of
this group of young French engineers, trained in the latest methods at the
École Polytechnique, to investigate ways of developing irrigation through
a barrage project. Enfantin tried to infiltrate himself as self-appointed
go-between, coordinator and publicist. Three Saint-Simonians, Hoart,
Bruneau and Lambert, who were highly competent engineers, formed part
of Linant’s committee, along with two Englishmen, Galloway and Wales,
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 115

and eight Egyptians who had been trained either in England or France.
They drew up plans for both a canal and a barrage across the Nile. The
Egyptian government favoured a barrage. Henri Fournel took the lead with
the Egyptians in promoting the canal project, urging that the canal should
take precedence because of its massive potential for foreign trade.
Fournel became totally absorbed in how to modernise and develop Egypt.
He also suggested building a school, a women’s hospital and a railway.
As the chief Saint-Simonian negotiator and collaborator with Linant and
senior Egyptian officials, including General Athem Bey, Fournel showed his
plans to the Pasha, who while liking the scheme, declared that he would
not dare authorise it.43 Mehemet-Ali made it plain that, while he could see
that a barrage would benefit Egypt, a canal would expose the country to
foreign domination. Fournel was disappointed at Enfantin’s lack of aware-
ness of the delicacy of these negotiations. He accused Enfantin of spending
too much time socialising, singing and amusing himself in the tents of the
Saint-Simonians and paying far too little attention to Linant, who was the
key person to win over if the Saint-Simonian detailed plan for a canal was
to materialise. Instead of trying to talk seriously to Linant, Enfantin would
burst into song in the middle of a conversation.
Like many of the sect, Fournel had gone through a serious psychological
and emotional crisis when the movement fell apart. In Egypt, Fournel lost
his blind faith in Enfantin and in the limitless ability of man to improve
society. His lengthy account of their Egyptian experiences is a blend of
their projects and relations with Egyptian officials, accompanied by math-
ematical and engineering calculations, woven together with a prolonged
personal psychoanalysis which has the tone of a confessional. The break-up
of the sect had culminated in a crisis in which members’ personalities were
torn asunder in a process as painful as giving birth. During the retreat
Enfantin accused him of lacking something, and Fournel interpreted this
as a prophecy for the void he now felt. He bemoaned his failure to achieve
more for their faith. Only his socialism, which Enfantin did not share, had
allowed him to retain some religious belief.44 When Mehemet-Ali finally
rejected the canal idea, Fournel left Egypt precipitously, vociferously criticis-
ing Enfantin’s determination to stay. Subsequently he immersed himself in
Rothschild’s first railway project. Fournel found it difficult to come to terms
with his and Enfantin’s failure and that he no longer had any confidence in
his former leader.
Enfantin struggled to maintain his authority over his former disciples,
careful in his correspondence to stress that he was their ‘father’.45 Urgently
rallied, most of the others decided to stay and promote the barrage. Enfantin
pointed out to his colleagues that the barrage, whose objective was to con-
trol the flow of the massive Nile and irrigate 1,600,000 hectares of land, was
not second-best to a canal, because it was technically more ambitious than
any other contemporary engineering project in Europe.46
116 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

Mehemet-Ali favoured the barrage but, perhaps put off by Enfantin’s

attempt to turn the construction into a collectivist enterprise,47 was not
interested in employing the Saint-Simonians as a group. Linant saw the
value of some of them as trained engineers and engaged Bruneau, Lambert,
Hoart, Hékékyan and Prax. A superabundance of unskilled labour, 40,000
men, was sent by the government to help. The project was started, and
on 15 August 1834 senior Egyptian officials, not including Mehemet-Ali
(to Enfantin’s chagrin), joined de Lesseps, Enfantin and their followers
to celebrate the fête Napoléon with champagne and burgundy at the bar-
rage site, a dramatic location alongside the pyramids. The senior engineer
on the project laid the first stone of the barrage. This was engraved with
the initials of both Napoleon and Mehemet-Ali.48 Enfantin, recalling the
Saint-Simonians’ other objective, offered a toast to women. Following a
more local tradition, a sheep was sacrificed at the site.49 The next day
the group enjoyed an excellent dinner washed down with fine French
wines, in true Saint-Simonian style. In all this detailing of what was drunk,
there was no mention of Muslim abstention from alcohol. Later Marshal
Marmont, one of Napoleon’s senior officers who had played a major role
in the imperial expedition to Egypt and had been disappointed when he
was not chosen to lead the 1830 invasion of Algeria, visited the site and
was also warmly received. Linant set to work to draw up plans. Enfantin’s
hopes of being put in charge of the project were dashed when he bom-
barded Linant with overly detailed Saint-Simonian theories for ‘a peaceful
workers’ army’. Linant simplified his schemes to organise two regiments
of workers. Lambert was impressed how local people, including women,
worked together, for instance to build a canal, with no arguing or con-
flict, retaining he thought, ‘the ancient religion of work’.50 The plans for
the barrage were proceeding tolerably well when plague struck in February
1835. Almost all the barrage workers were sent away. Linant had to suspend
operations. Enfantin was quick to relocate to Karnak, living close to the
tombs of ancient kings, where he started to learn Arabic and became pop-
ular, earning the nickname abou dounia, ‘father of the world’. Most of the
Saint-Simonians followed him, but Hoart, Fourcade and Alexandre died of
the plague at the barrage. In total, 12 Saint-Simonians succumbed including
the doctor, Delon, the architect Lamy, the sculptor Henri Alric (1804–
1835), the farming expert Busco de Dombasle, plus Maréchal, Gondret,
Dumolard, Génevois and Ollivier. Suzanne Voilquin heroically tended the
sick. Cholera followed the plague. A number of the Saint-Simonians who
were left became hachaschines, blotting out their sorrows in hashish and
heroin. On first trying hashish Voilquin commented: ‘I was overcome . . . it
was not like sleep, but a delicious ecstasy . . . I wandered around in an
ideal world.’ She determined that it was not an experience she planned to
repeat.51
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 117

Suzanne Voilquin and Islam

The voyage to Egypt had started as a search for a female leader, and although
this was soon abandoned, women figured in the project, and Suzanne
Voilquin published what became the best-known account of their time in
Egypt. She wrote about relationships within the sect, and offered the first
detailed account in French of the social and cultural position of Egyptian
women. This appeared first in 1837 in a long series of articles in Le Siècle,
one of the new, lower-priced newspapers, and later in her memoirs.52 A total
of about eight Saint-Simonian women went to Egypt, including Fournel’s
wife, Cécile, and Rogé’s wife, Clorinde.53 In 1834 Cécile Fournel published a
letter from Enfantin in Cairo, appealing to women to join them, comment-
ing that those who responded could consider themselves as ‘sent by God
himself’.54 Enfantin soon forgot about his invitation, leaving all the women
off the list of those who had been in Egypt that he compiled in 1845.
Suzanne Voilquin was one of the few women who responded to Enfantin’s
appeal. Voilquin (self-styled ‘daughter of the people’ in the title of her book)
spent five months visiting Saint-Simonian families throughout France to try
to raise finance and find more recruits. Her ‘apostolic tour de France’ failed,
and even her companion, a painter, Isabella, decided in Marseille that Egypt
was not for her. Boarding the boat in November 1834, Voilquin met up with
Massol, Drouot, Gondret and Rogé, also bound for Alexandria.
Voilquin wrote graphically and emotionally of their struggle to survive
in Egypt. Unlike her male counterparts, she had no rich family to bankroll
her. Voilquin was determined to be independent and began life in Egypt as
a laundress for the sect. She never lived with the group and always seemed
to feel a distance between herself and most of the members, whom she fre-
quently described as an ‘elite’. Like all their worker recruits, Voilquin never
hesitated to accept money from better-off members. They found lodgings
for her with a French doctor, Dr Dussap, who had befriended the Saint-
Simonians. He had remained in Egypt when Napoleon’s expedition left and
bought a young negress from the slave market and fell in love with her. They
married and had two children. When his wife died of the plague, Voilquin
took charge of his children, his daughter, Hanem, aged 15, and son, Arif,
who was 12. Dussap was training Hanem to be a doctor. Voilquin joined
the lessons and became so close to Hanem that she and Dussap planned
that Hanem would spend time with Voilquin in Paris.55 Voilquin also helped
Dussap and another French doctor, Delong, tend plague victims, and Dussap
encouraged victims to seek help at his home. Anyone who could, including
nearly all the Saint-Simonians, fled Cairo. Voilquin mentioned scathingly
how husbands abandoned the city, leaving wives and children to risk infec-
tion. In the evenings Dr Delong and four other Saint-Simonians, including
Drs Rigaud and Fourcade, would join them for dinner, followed by singing
118 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

Figure 6 Suzanne Voilquin, ‘daughter of the people’

Source: Collection Images, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF).

and dancing. Dussap, well aware that there was no known cure for the
plague, believed that fear was a big killer and positive thinking helped recov-
ery. Voilquin recovered from the disease, which she may have caught when
taking part in a still birth for a woman who died of the plague some hours
later. Local men who had not been infected played ball games, believing
that the plague was carried by evil spirits and that these would be trapped
by the ball.
Expat communities are always tightly knit, and ruptures not infre-
quent. The Saint-Simonians associated with other Europeans but lived
as a close-knit group. Their evenings were spent talking and dancing to
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 119

Rogé’s music. ‘One can survive if one avoids becoming part of a harem’,
commented Enfantin.56 Lambert, on the other hand, considered that the
Saint-Simonian ladies themselves constituted a harem. It was public knowl-
edge that, the Saint-Simonian, Agarithe Caussidère flitted between their
tents at the barrage.57 Suzanne Voilquin would not have found it easy to
conceal her own pregnancy, despite her adoption of sometimes female,
sometimes male, Arab dress. Saint-Simonians also became sexually involved
with local people. Towards the end of his life Urbain related how he fell in
love successively with the wife of his landlord, Dr Dussap, and when she
died of plague, with her daughter, who tragically also succumbed to the
plague. Either Suzanne Voilquin was very discreet about Urbain’s love life
in her memoirs or Urbain and Voilquin did not lodge with Dr Dussap at the
same time.
Saint-Simonian ‘free love’, their uniforms, their claim to be ‘apostles’ and
their clannishness must have pushed the tolerance of fellow Europeans to its
limits. In addition there were serious tensions over which the new arrivals
had no control: the plague, rivalries among the British, German and French
experts for the ear of Mehemet-Ali and the impact of the war in Syria. Mat-
ters came to a head when the plague was subsiding and people began to
drift back to Cairo in July 1835. A minor scandal erupted which revealed
how hostile some Europeans had become to the Saint-Simonians. Voilquin
had nursed Hanem and Dussap58 with the assistance of Lamy and Maréchal
through the attack of plague that killed them. All except Voilquin died. After
Dussap’s death the French assistant consul accused her of stealing money
and property from him.59
Prax, Gondret and Cognat made things worse by paying a visit to Dussap’s
home and trying to persuade his young son Arif that the French consul and
his two associates were out to cause trouble for the Saint-Simonians. Tippel,
the consul, threatened to bring the full force of the law on the three. The
head of the Medical School, Clot Bey, put them under his protection at his
own home and persuaded the consul that it would be impolitic to pursue
three such highly educated young Frenchmen on the accusation of a young
boy, who was obviously the mouthpiece of others. Although the affair blew
over, problems in Egypt worsened. In the summer of 1835 plague was suc-
ceeded by cholera. In addition, when the annual ceremony of the release of
the Nile water to irrigate the land took place, there was insufficient water for
cultivation.
After Dussap’s death, Voilquin, clad in male Muslim dress, worked for a
year as a nurse in the Esbekieh hospital supervised by Clot Bey. The doctor
assured her she would have a midwifery post at the women’s hospital he was
about to set up in Abouzabel, but in the end decided her qualifications were
inadequate, although the doctor provided her with a certificate for her year
of study under his direction. At this point she decided to go back to France
and complete her training.60
120 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

Voilquin’s midwifery skills and general nursing abilities had been

fully tested in Cairo. Lodging in the community, her linguistic fluency
and attempt to understand local cultures meant she was accepted by
local women, in ways that many Saint-Simonians never achieved. Most
Europeans, parroting tour guides, wrote about scenery, sex and politics in
their often stereotypical accounts of visits to the ‘Orient’. Voilquin also wrote
a stereotypical description of the pyramids, but her memoirs are far more
striking. She gave a first-hand account of how the Saint-Simonians coped
with Egypt and with each other. Gustave d’Eichthal, who said he never knew
her well, praised the accuracy of her memoirs.61 Even more significantly, she
produced a unique chronicle of how a female working-class member of the
sect interpreted the social and cultural life of different groups of women in
Egypt, albeit mostly the better off. She wrote about traditions associated with
birth, marriage and death, religious and other festivals, as well as providing
far more credible accounts of the culture of the harem than European men
were able to write.
Voilquin arrived with expectations and at first was disappointed that the
‘Orient’ did not live up to travellers’ tales:

I was distressed by my first impressions of a land that should have been

flourishing; everywhere was dirty and neglected, the people tanned but
so miserable; they replied to you in guttural tones without bothering to
move . . . what could you make of a government which had such splendid
ships in its ports, but abandoned its villagers to such poverty . . . . It is ter-
rible to reflect on the barbaric indifference of oriental despotism to the
life of a man.62

She noted the expressionless faces of the women but also the grace of their
bodies, free of European corsets. Their hands and feet were badly scarred by
heavy loads. She quickly decided that the total veil was a sign of oppression.
She observed that the women lived as prisoners, enclosed in barred houses.
When Lamy pointed out that female inferiority preceded the Muslim faith,
she observed drily, ‘Perhaps, but it was Mohammed who made it a dogma
that force should abuse weakness; he garrotted us with two unquenchable
passions, fanaticism and sensuality.’63 When European men described Orien-
tal women, sensuality always predominated. Later in the century a number
of other European women would criticise the subordination of Muslim
women, but from a more elite and remote standpoint than that of Voilquin.
When she visited a public bath house with fellow Saint-Simonians
Suzanne and Clara, Voilquin discovered that Egyptian women were not
always locked away. Local ladies were relaxing for the entire day, enjoy-
ing a massage, a variety of beauty treatments, drinking coffee and enjoying
each others’ company.64 Dr Dussap’s daughter Hanem took her to a baptism
ceremony, where the women were keen to discover how their ceremonies
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 121

compared with similar occasions in France. Hanem also took her to the Cetti-
Zeynab mosque, considered both the most holy and the most beautiful in
Cairo. It was the only mosque women could visit and a place of pilgrimage
for women unable to conceive.65
Voilquin’s medical work and her close contacts with the local elite gave her
the chance to visit Turkish harems, ‘the lovely cage’, the part of the house
reserved for women. Through Dr Delong she was invited to the women’s
quarters of the governor, Hasan Bey. The ladies were keen to profit from her
medical training. The governor’s wife (he was a keen reader of Voltaire and
proud to emphasise that he had only one wife) asked her advice on how to
conceive a second son. Sons gave a wife lifelong status. Hasan Bey’s sister,
who was of ample proportions, asked for a slimming aid. She asked Voilquin
how to tell whether two white slaves, whom Hasan fancied, would be ripe to
produce boy babies. Voilquin was diplomatically evasive, realising that the
wife was jealous of the young girls. For all her professional preoccupation
with birth and babies, she was appalled at the monotony of harem life.66
Voilquin compared the Muslim women she met to children, devoid of moral
judgement or real religious faith. When the local women started to ask her
about how women lived in France, she took the chance to criticise their thick
veils, encumbering clothes and the seclusion in which they were obliged to
live, separate from men, and to contrast this with the freer life style of French
women.67 When no men were present, veils were discarded. One Easter at
the Frankish church, on just such an occasion, Voilquin deliberately kept
her veil in place. The other women began to suggest, as a joke, that perhaps
she was a man, concealing himself to spy on them.
Voilquin attended a Muslim marriage, with evident scorn that money and
an intact hymen were the only considerations when deciding on a bride.
(Surely most bourgeois French marriage settlements were based on similar
notions.) First the father of the proposed bride would meet with males in the
groom’s family to work out the price they would pay for the girl, and what
would be returned if she proved inadequate. On the day of the marriage the
girl was washed at the public wash house by her women friends and family
and dressed in finery, borrowed if necessary. Bride and women attendants
then processed to the groom’s house. He would lift the girl’s veil for the
first time to check his purchase. Then in all but very elite households there
would be a gap of three days while the girl’s virginity would be verified by an
elderly female hymen hunter. If she did not pass muster, the new wife would
be sent packing. If all went well, there would be a meal and festivities.
Although Voilquin, according to her own account, was accepted by
local women, both Copts and Muslims, mutual incomprehension prevailed
on sexual matters. Voilquin, like other Europeans, was shocked by male
‘holy men’ who apparently advertised their sexual availability by suggestive
singing and dancing in the street. She was equally appalled at the desper-
ate insecurity of female prostitutes, not only in Cairo but also in Paris. She
122 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

could cope with the idea that Muslim marriage could be temporary, per-
haps not all that different from Saint-Simonian ‘free love’.68 What seemed to
alarm her most was the extremely frank way Muslim women discussed sex-
uality among themselves. Women would gather in the harem to enjoy the
sensual dancing of female almahs. The favourite was a ‘bee hunt’ in which
a girl, supposedly stung, would dance, searching for the sting, taking off
veil after veil to reveal finally her entire body. The watching women would
shout out appreciatively. Voilquin expressed horror at what she saw as a
double standard. Although women obeyed a strict code of sexual behaviour,
it seemed to her that it was based on force, not on an internal sense of
morality.
Voilquin’s criticisms of Egyptian sexual mores and, by inference, insistence
on her own moral code (the early chapters of her memoirs were domi-
nated by her ultimately ineffectual attempts to resist the sexual overtures
of her fiancé), seem dishonest beside her own sexual experiences in Egypt,
which she did not mention in her published work. Her infant son, who
died a few weeks old in the summer of 1836, was christened Alfred Charles
Prosper Monnier (her own surname before marriage). The baby’s first names
might have suggested three possible fathers. Dr Alfred Delong, a colleague of
Dr Dussap, worked closely with Voilquin over most of her time in Egypt and
perhaps had had most opportunity. She described her affectionate parting
with him when she returned home and her sadness at his death not long
afterwards.69 Then there was the engineer Charles Lambert, who was very
frank about the Saint-Simonian ‘harem’, and as the highest-earning mem-
ber of the sect in Egypt might have seemed top in the alpha male stakes, as
would Prosper Enfantin himself, whose good opinion she sought and whose
letters she eagerly copied into her memoirs. The baby’s roll-call of names
and ‘mysterious’ parentage fitted the sect’s self- image, certainly their sex-
ual behaviour in Egypt. Voilquin said nothing about her baby in print, even
though she commented at some length about her multiple miscarriages with
her husband.

Saint-Simonian impact on Egypt

Saint-Simonians were most visible in mining exploration, engineering,

medicine and teaching. The biggest success was Charles Lambert. He cre-
ated and directed a new School of Mining and led several expeditions to
find suitable mining sites. In 1838 he also became director of the new École
Polytechnique at Boulaq, which he developed with other Saint-Simonians.
The college played a leading role in teacher training. He held this post until
1850. Lambert remained at the head of the School of Mining until 1851.
He worked closely with Mehemet-Ali and his government on a number of
projects. He was awarded the title Lambert Bey, a symbol of the cultural
fusion of which the Saint-Simonians dreamed.70 Lambert used his title with
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 123

great pride and made a considerable impact on the French who ‘did’ the
Orient, including Flaubert and Maxime Du Camp.
The Saint-Simonians had most impact on the Egyptian educational sys-
tem; teachers were the most numerous professional group who went to
Egypt. They were the formative influence in the creation of the education
committee and a consultative committee for science and the arts. In 1839
Dr Nicolas Perron became director of the school of medicine in Cairo, when
Dr Clot Bey,71 who spent most of his working life in Egypt, was promoted to
be general health inspector. Bruneau was appointed to the Artillery College
in Tura. Machereau, after teaching at a girls’ school with virtually no pay,
was commissioned to design the cavalry school in Giza. Lamy set up a stud
farm at Choubrah, while Busco de Dombasle and Ollivier launched model
farms. They also played a part in the creation of the school of infantry at
Damiette. Urbain taught French at the military college in Kanqua.72
Saint-Simonian artists, including Achard, Alric, Rogé, David, Robaudy and
Machereau, painters, sculptors and musicians, were influenced by local cul-
ture. Alric modelled a bust of Mehemet-Ali. Félicien David (1810–1876), who
had joined the movement in 1832 with fellow artist Justus and wrote music
for the retreat, some of which is still sung today, was powerfully influenced
by Arab music. Le Désert was first performed in 1844, thanks to Michel
Chevalier. A new recording has recently been made.73 Clorinde Rogé, who
had been one of the first Saint-Simonians to arrive in Egypt, planned to
open a school for local girls to teach them arithmetic and to read and write
in French. She had the backing of Soliman Pasha. She was also invited by
Mehemet-Ali to teach music. The invitations came to nothing, and the Rogés
went back to France.
Some Saint-Simonians made serious attempts to understand the local cul-
ture. One of their leading experts was Nicolas Perron, a specialist in the
language, history and culture. Under his guidance Thomas Urbain learned
Arabic and became a Muslim, taking the name Ismaÿl. He argued that
his conversion was appropriate for a person with his background. He also
remained a Catholic, believing the two faiths to be compatible. Urbain wrote
at length of the significant cultural implications of circumcision, but did not
mention the physical impact. Machereau also converted when he fell pas-
sionately in love with a local girl, Khadra. He adopted Muslim dress, studied
the Koran, converted and took the name Mohammed-Machereau. While
waiting for the completion of this quite long-drawn-out process, Khadra
remained a servant in the home of a senior officer in Djizah. He had already
seduced the girl’s sister and got to work on Khadra, plying her with jewels.
She eventually succumbed, leaving Machereau distraught, but presumably
only momentarily because he married another Muslim lady, ‘younger, more
beautiful and much more faithful’,74 and spent the rest of his life in Egypt.
Saint-Simonians had a limited impact on Egyptian intellectual life. In 1833
Barrault gave a year’s course of lectures on the history of civilisation and
124 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

seminars on Saint-Simonian doctrine in Alexandria. The Moniteur Egyptien

publicised the seminars, but few Egyptians understood French. He wrote a
long analysis, dedicated to their dead colleague Hoart, of how the Orient
and the West could work together. His book was part history, part geogra-
phy and part culture, and concluded that the future depending on bringing
together the West and the Orient, and that Jerusalem was the key. The West
had much to learn from Muslim faith and society, which had been less
exposed than the West to rapid change and upheaval.75 When Soliman-
Pacha took over as viceroy, he introduced Saint-Simonians to some army
officers, mostly Turks. Edhem Bey, who became minister of public educa-
tion in 1838, was an enthusiastic convert and corresponded with Enfantin
as ‘my dear father’.76 A French visitor, Jean-Jacques Ampère, professor of
philology at the Collège de France in Paris, noted the extent of Edhem
Bey’s sympathy with Saint-Simonian ideas, commenting that the limited
traditional Egyptian concept of private property was not unlike that of the
Saint-Simonians.77 The Saint-Simonians made contact with a number of
the local elite, notably Rifa’a Rafi’al-Tahatawi, a force in the contemporary
Egyptian intellectual renaissance. They were already in communication with
Mohamed Mazhar Pasha, who became Mehemet-Ali’s chief engineer and was
responsible for the construction of a series of lighthouses along the coast.78
Mazhar studied engineering in Paris for ten years, where he had been taught
by Auguste Comte and became a Saint-Simonian. When Mazhar was plan-
ning a visit to Britain in the spring of 1843, Comte wrote introducing him
to John Stuart Mill. They became friends.
A number of other Egyptian engineers had close relations with the
Saint-Simonians, including Rechouaan-Effendi, Ahmed Baroudi, Mustapha-
Effendi, director of the engineering school, and Abd-El-Rahman Rouchdi-
Effendi, second-in-command of the school in Boulaq. However, none of
these men would have dared voice public support for Saint-Simonian ideas.79
No word of enthusiasm for Saint-Simonism was uttered by an Egyptian until
the early twentieth century, and only from the late 1950s did Egyptian
writers start to link their own socialist ideas with Saint-Simonism. Saint-
Simonism was no more of a blueprint for reform for Muslim societies
than was liberalism, because both, not unreasonably, were seen locally as
doctrines of Western imperialism and oppression.80
By the mid-1830s French influence in Egypt was waning. French comman-
ders of both the infantry and the cavalry schools were dismissed. Enfantin’s
ambitious plans to be involved in the new École Polytechnique and organ-
ise armies of workers were not realised. His quest was a total disaster. He
was ‘the man who lost his shadow’ in Egypt, as d’Eichthal remarked to
Aglaé Saint-Hilaire. By the summer of 1836 revolts in newly conquered
Syria meant that war was imminent and no workers were available for civil-
ian projects. Franco-Egyptian relations soured, and Voilquin reported that
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 125

German engineers had been recruited to replace the Saint-Simonians.81 They

had run out of money, and most went back to France in 1836.
Only a dozen or so Saint-Simonian were left, including engineers Lambert,
Bruneau, Perron, Machereau, Javary, Reboul, and Janin. Three Saint-
Simonian doctors, Cognat, Charpin and Fourcade, and the lawyer Colin,
also stayed. Barrault and his brother spent nearly two years plotting possi-
ble routes for a canal linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea.82 In June
1838 the Saint-Simonian sympathiser Linant, now head of Egyptian pub-
lic works, reassembled the barrage commission, including Lambert, Bruneau
and Hékékyan, but shortage of funds prevented them making any headway
on the main project, although Linant was able to build smaller schemes.
Saint-Simonians were among the most enthusiastic publicists for Egypt.
Charton did much to encourage interest with numerous articles on Egypt
in his weekly popular paper. Appealing woodblock illustrations were inter-
spersed innovatively with text.83 Napoleon’s expedition continued to sell
books. The journalist Reybaud wrote a ten-volume account of the expedi-
tion in 1836. Egypt remained a favourite destination for better-off French
and British travellers. When Flaubert finally visited the Nile in 1849, he
stayed with Mougul Bey, a French polytechnicien who had moved to Egypt
in 1838 to become the director of the barrage, the completion of which in
1849 meant that the whole of Lower Egypt could be irrigated and farmed
successfully.84

Saint-Simonians and the Suez Canal

Urbain was one of few Saint-Simonians who was aware that for Egypt’s lead-
ers economic development had to be closely linked to their religion. In 1835
he wrote:

Industry will rescue Egypt, but if industrial development is not rooted in

religion, if industrial growth is not defined as the route to Mohammed’s
paradise on earth, it will have no influence. In other words, there must
be an iman alongside the engineer and men must go to work after the
mosque.85

Saint-Simonians played a pivotal role in the conception and plans for the
Suez Canal, but in the end the committee they organised was excluded from
the company that actually built the canal. Perhaps they failed to follow
Urbain’s advice.
There had been a canal from the thirteenth century BC to the eighth cen-
tury AD, when it silted up, apart from a few isolated channels. Napoleon’s
engineers drew up the first modern plans but decided that the project was
structurally unworkable, because they wrongly calculated that the Red Sea
126 Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France

was 10 metres lower than the Mediterranean. During their time in Egypt
in the 1830s the Saint-Simonians developed detailed plans. They left Egypt
with drawings, but no contract.
Michel Chevalier revived interest in the canal project in 1844, when
another major canal across the isthmus of Panama, was under discussion.86
Linant de Bellefonds, chief engineer to Mehemet-Ali, immediately made a
feasibility study – the first part directed to engineers, the second for diplo-
mats and the third for bankers – with a map. Linant calculated that the
canal would take three years to build and need 16,000 workers. However
Mehemet-Ali still saw more advantage for Egypt in the barrage, not yet com-
plete. All the southern European countries, and also Holland because of
her colonies, favoured a canal. The British wanted to build a railway from
Alexandria to Suez. They alone among European powers would benefit from
a railway, because they had substantial fleets in both the Mediterranean
and the Red Sea and needed better access to India.87 In 1844 Linant pro-
duced another longer and much better-organised version. He pointed out
that Mehemet-Ali had dropped one of his earlier objections to the open-
ing up of Egypt, a fear that Christians would try to seize Jerusalem from
the Muslims, although he was still concerned about Christian influence
in the Holy Lands. Linant’s survey was a carefully crafted, and for the
Egyptians, quite flattering, combination of ancient history, geology, engi-
neering, and tempting financial possibilities. He described the ancient canal
dug apparently in Abraham’s time by the king of Egypt Tarsin-ben-Malia;
he then ran through Herodotus’s commentary, the geology and hydrol-
ogy of the region, finally arriving at a cost benefit analysis for Egypt of
digging a new canal, which he estimated at 50 million piastres. He was care-
ful to make his technical data comprehensible to a novice. He concluded
that a new canal would benefit not only the Egyptian economy but also
world peace.88 Linant was clearly aware of the need to blend faith with
fortune.
In 1845 the editor of the Fourierist paper Démocratie pacifique announced
that a company was being set up to develop the Suez isthmus. Compet-
ing rail and canal solutions were being debated. The Fourierists suggested
that a railway would provide a temporary solution while a canal was built.
Mehemet-Ali should have a substantial voice, but the isthmus should be
declared a neutral zone.89 In 1846 Enfantin, encouraged by the duc de
Montpensier, set up a Société d’Études de Canal de Suez.90 Enfantin was
the chairman, and it met at his Paris home. The committee consisted of
an international group of engineers and businessmen which met monthly,
including Arlès-Dufour, Linant, Negrelli, an Austrian canal enthusiast, a
German, Starbruck, the British railway engineer Robert Stephenson, as well
as Paulin, Léon and Jules Talabot.91 They agreed to raise 150,000 francs cap-
ital, equally from British, French and Austrian sources.92 The Chambers of
Commerce of Lyon and Marseille provided some funds.
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 127

Linant sent maps to the duc de Montpensier to show that projections for
the necessary water depth for a canal were feasible.93 He also revised his
detailed memoir on the scheme, but Enfantin discouraged him from sending
it. Not unreasonably, particularly as an idle 18-year-old Arthur Enfantin had
been imposed on him by his father (Linant had ten children of his own),
Linant was suspicious that Enfantin was trying to use him.94 The French and
British could not agree on whether the proposed canal should be cut from
Alexandria to Suez via the barrage or whether it should cross the isthmus.
Organised into three groups, based roughly on nationality, they visited Egypt
in 1847. Detailed reports on the possible route and likely use of the canal
were drawn up. The British still rejected the notion of a canal. The French
‘brigade’ in the international Suez society tried to reassure the British that
halving the length of the sea route to India, also to Australia and China,
would be most beneficial to them.95
The 1848 revolution interrupted the project. In August, Negrelli, promoted
to Minister of Public Works in Vienna, tried unsuccessfully to restart their
meetings. Enfantin had a period of ill health, and Arlès was distracted by his
role in international exhibitions. Mehemet-Ali died in 1849, which meant
that Egyptian courtiers were less interested. It was not until towards the end
of 1854 that negotiations resumed. By then Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had
been introduced to the canal scheme by the Saint-Simonians in the early
1830s, joined the group and at first worked closely with Enfantin and Arlès-
Dufour. He seemed to conduct most of the negotiations in Egypt, meeting
with Linant, another French engineer, Mougel Bey, and the new viceroy.
In November he wrote a friendly letter to Arlès-Dufour telling him that
the viceroy had made him chairman of ‘Compagnie Universelle du Canal
Maritime de Suez’ and that he and Linant and Mougel would in the next
few days draw up a preparatory study, based on Linant’s plans. He calculated
they would need 200 million francs capital. With this in mind he planned
to return to Paris at the beginning of January, when he hoped to meet his
friends the Rothschilds, Fould and Seilliere. De Lesseps urged Arlès-Dufour
to talk to the Pereires.
De Lesseps issued warnings that the Saint-Simonians did not heed. He
urged Arlès-Dufour to persuade Talabot not to publish his plan for the canal
because the viceroy was totally hostile to building a canal from Alexandria.
He wanted a direct crossing of the isthmus by a ‘very long and deep canal’
(his underlining). De Lesseps asked Arlès-Dufour to see relevant ministers
in London, the French ambassador, and to secure as much financial sup-
port as possible from English capitalists. The viceroy wanted an international
company to build the canal, and he and his family would put money into
the project. De Lesseps hoped to persuade Prince Napoleon to chair the
company.96 In December 1854 he wrote to Arlès-Dufour asking him to buy
12 watches in Geneva with Turkish numbers to present to the officers of the
viceroy who had helped him.97 The tone of this last letter seemed to suggest
128

Figure 7 Route for Suez Canal, Linant de Bellefonds

Source: Collection Images, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF).
 Egypt: Orientalism and Modernisation 129

that Arlès’s role was merely to shop for bribes. Within a few weeks it was clear
that de Lesseps’s company intended to take control of the canal concession,
using Linant’s plans. The Saint-Simonians had been excluded.
The Saint-Simonians were in disarray. On 10 February Arlès-Dufour diplo-
matically wrote to de Lesseps offering to give up the Talabot plan and
accept his leadership. However, in a far from conciliatory letter the same
day Enfantin wrote to de Lesseps complaining that the Saint-Simonians
were being excluded, that he did not trust the viceroy, condemning Linant’s
plan as unrealistic and suggesting de Lesseps had accused the original group
of robbing him. He claimed that, without their support, de Lesseps would
not find any European backers. Enfantin totally misjudged the situation.
De Lesseps refused to reply to a barrage of anxious letters from Arlès-Dufour.
De Lesseps secured funds mainly in France, but also from an international
European consortium. He incorporated Negrelli and Bruck into his company.
British investors continued to prefer Stephenson’s railway project. Repeated
attempts by Enfantin to secure an audience with the Emperor to gain his sup-
port for the Saint-Simonian project showed the Saint-Simonians had been
side-lined, which may in part have been due to his own lack of diplomacy
or, as Negrelli suggested, to their seven-year delay in not reaching a decision
on the canal. But perhaps most relevant were family ties. De Lesseps was the
Empress’s cousin.98
De Lesseps built the canal, never acknowledging the contributions of
Saint-Simonian engineers, businessmen and bankers.99 In 1869 it was inau-
gurated by the Empress on the Imperial yacht, the first ship to enter the
canal, to the sound of Verdi’s Aïda, a pseudo-Egyptian opera composed
for the occasion. The trade the canal generated had a notable impact on
Marseille, although Saint-Simonians made less profit from the prosperity
than they had hoped because the Pereires failed to gain the concession to
build a railway directly to the port of Marseille.
Although Ferdinand de Lesseps never mentioned the important legacy
of the Saint-Simonians in the planning of the canal, it is still recalled,
particularly in Egypt itself.