Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt modeled scientific cultural appropriation

Evidence

For my purposes here, the keynote of the relationship was set for the Near East and Europe by the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798, an invasion which was in many ways the very model of a truly scientific appropriation of one culture by another, apparently stronger one. For with Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt processes were set in motion between East and West that still dominate our contemporary cultural and political perspectives. And the Napoleonic expedition, with its great collective monument of erudition, the Description de l’Égypte, provided a scene or setting for Orientalism, since Egypt and subsequently the other Islamic lands were viewed as the live province, the laboratory, the theater of effective Western knowledge about the Orient. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 132

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘laboratory/theater of Western knowledge’ framing connects to the biopolitical ordering of colonized space and to later Islamophobia readings on how Muslim lands get framed as sites for Western intervention. — connects to: Napoleon’s 1798 invasion inaugurated the systematic use of scholarly knowledge to serve empire; Napoleon’s failed Egyptian invasion modeled scholarly exploitation for later empires; Knowledge about the colonized became central to conquest only with Napoleon’s 1798 invasion
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 132