À la frontière de l’Égypte : les représentations du canal de Suez

The ten years it took to dig the Suez canal, from 1859 to 1869, contribute to a founding chapter in the history of representations of the canal, leaving rich collections of pictures and texts, well before the canal’s inauguration. A literary style emerged with its own specific codes, accompanying the work in progress on the site and depicting its effervescence. This literature bears witness to the profound geographical upheavals the canal would bring about and is usually inspired by propaganda considerations, aiming to convince the public of the imminent success of the work, undertaken on a truly pharaonic scale. It also contributes to the invention of the notion of a new oriental space, given legitimate existence for the sake of the Egyptian nation. The excavation work on the canal brought radical changes to a desert region at the edge of this nation, a new frontier to be tamed. It was the incarnation of the end of one world and the beginning of another one, beyond. As soon as the project for cutting through the isthmus was announced, symbolic representations developed to speak of limits and geographical ends, promising the coming together of peoples. Finally, the canal also came to embody an enterprise of conquest, a scientific and technical victory for the Western world, celebrated with much pomp and circumstance after the ten years’ work. But the region remained a territory inhabited by a cosmopolitan population which has left a mixed, cross-cultural heritage and a divided memory

The representations of the Suez canal (XVe-XXe centuries) : aesthetics and policies of a vision

L’histoire du canal de Suez constitue un champ d’étude toujours vivant et sensible par son actualité, qui a fait naître des sentiments contrastés. C’est l’histoire de sa symbolique, des fantasmes et des projections qu’il a pu faire naître qui se trouve étudiée à partir d’un corpus littéraire et iconographique inédit. L’originalité de la recherche repose sur la multiplication des approches et le nombre d’œuvres rassemblées permettant de sortir d’une chronologie restreinte au projet de creusement. Elle entend dépasser la vision restrictive d’une entreprise qui ne peut être confondue avec l’action coloniale de la France mais qui est traversée par une idéologie de conquête. Elle apporte une nouvelle approche dans la représentation des voyages orientalistes. Le patrimoine artistique né de ce chantier universel pose enfin la question de sa réception et de son partage mémoriel entre Orient et Occident, encore riches d’enjeux aujourd’hui.The history of the Suez canal is a field of study that is still as alive and sensitive as ever, one that elicits mixed feelings. It is the story of its symbolism and the fantasies and projections that have sprung from it that is studied through a heretofore-unexamined literary and iconographical corpus. The originality of this research lies in its multiple approaches and the number of works assembled, which enables one to step out of a narrow chronology of the digging of the canal. It seeks to go beyond the restrictive vision of an endeavour that cannot be considered French colonial action yet is shot through with an ideology of conquest. It brings a fresh approach to the representation of orientalist travel. The artistic heritage born of this universal public work finally poses the question of its reception and how its memory is shared between East and West, with as much at stake today as ever

British Travellers in the Isthmus of Suez, from Napoleon’s Campaign (1798) to the Construction of the Canal (1859)

During the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, the narratives of travellers to Egypt recurrently mentioned the Suez Canal project, which fascinated public opinions in Europe and roused the interests of political leaders. The connection between the two seas went together with the ambition to conquer Egypt, as European powers wished to improve commercial links with India. During his Egyptian campaign (1798-1801), Napoleon Bonaparte himself explored the Isthmus of Su..

Geographies of Contact

This interdisciplinary collection of essays, in keeping with recent historiographic approaches to East-West cultural relations, focuses on the material and spatial conditions of cultural encounters between Britain and the Middle East, from the late Middle Ages to the dawn of the twentieth century. By exploring a diversity of contexts and sites of encounter (from cosmopolitan cities to private collections), and by underlining the manifold nature of cultural exchanges connected with them, the essays outline the dynamic and complex interplay which contributed to the circulation of knowledge between these regions. They also bring together a variety of practices (diplomatic, geographical, aesthetic, archaeological, literary or commercial) in order to highlight the multi-layered dimension of these cultural transfers and exchanges