Napoleon institutionalized Orientalists and co-opted religious leaders into colonial administration

Evidence

When Napoleon left Egypt, he gave strict instructions to his deputy that Egypt was to be administered according to the model he had set: Orientalists were to be consulted before policies could be enacted, and the Muslim religious leaders he had won over also needed to be part of the arsenal of colonial rule. Napoleon charged his small army of scholars with the task of gathering vast amounts of firsthand information about Egypt. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 158

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Illustrates the scholarly-soldier integration that Said describes throughout Orientalism, and foreshadows modern counterinsurgency’s ‘hearts and minds’ strategies.

Related

• Napoleon institutionalized Orientalist consultation as standing colonial policy (similarity 0.93)
• Military weakness forced colonial rulers to co-opt local religious elites for rule. (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial conquerors deployed Orientalist scholars to disguise conquest as religious affinity. (similarity 0.86)
• Napoleon’s geographers aimed to instill an active imperial sense in Egyptians (similarity 0.83)
• Napoleon’s 1798 invasion made scholarly knowledge central to colonial conquest (similarity 0.83)
• Napoleon’s 1798 Egypt invasion made scholarly knowledge central to colonization (similarity 0.83)
• Napoleon’s 1798 invasion inaugurated the systematic use of scholarly knowledge to serve empire (similarity 0.82)
• Academic study of Islam only began with Orientalism’s language training (similarity 0.82)
• Knowledge about the colonized became central to conquest only with Napoleon’s 1798 invasion (similarity 0.82)
• Napoleon’s Egyptian conquest modeled the civilizing mission on scholarship, preparation, and justification (similarity 0.82)
• Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt modernized Western knowledge of the Orient. (similarity 0.81)
• Napoleon co-opted Islam to win over Egyptians rather than demonizing it (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial administrators directly funded and patronized the scholarly construction of the Orient (similarity 0.81)
• Napoleon’s expedition deliberately taught Egyptians imperial ambition (similarity 0.81)
• Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt inaugurated knowledge-production as an imperial instrument (similarity 0.81)