Europe’s first Middle East colonial violence already doubled as tourism

Evidence

Algiers, unlike Cairo as we saw, was a town that happened to be clearly visible to an external observer, from a ship at sea. So clearly, in fact, that in 1830 entrepreneurs from Marseilles had converted a steamer into a floating hotel and taken tourists to watch the city’s bombardment and occupation by the French. (Thus from its opening act of violence, European colonisation of the Middle East began to involve the new tourist industry.) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 194

Categorization

• CANDY: Tourists in 1830 paid to watch the French bombard Algiers from a converted steamer — violence as spectacle, a striking conversation fact.
• SEED: Essay angle: the deep entanglement of tourism and military violence from the very start of modern colonialism.