Enlightenment travel science was fused with French colonial ambition

Evidence

For Volney after all was a canny Frenchman, and—like Chateaubriand and Lamartine a quarter-century after him—he eyed the Near Orient as a likely place for the realization of French colonial ambition. What Napoleon profited from in Volney was the enumeration, in ascending order of difficulty, of the obstacles to be faced in the Orient by any French expeditionary force. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 207

Categorization

• XREF: The enumeration of obstacles ‘in ascending order of difficulty’ prefigures later Orientalist taxonomies that arrange the Orient into manageable lists for colonial administration. — connects to: Volney’s scientific travelogue prefaced French colonial ambition in the Orient — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 207; Napoleon turned Enlightenment philosophy of civilization into a concrete colonial program — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 74; Traveler-scientists’ impersonality masked their service to colonial ambition (+6 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 207
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Volney’s scientific travelogue prefaced French colonial ambition in the Orient — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 207; Napoleon turned Enlightenment philosophy of civilization into a concrete colonial program — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 74; Traveler-scientists’ impersonality masked their service to colonial ambition (+6 more)