Bonaparte’s Expedition to Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) and His Policy towards Local Christians

В статье рассматриваются основные аспекты политики французского военного командования в отношении христианских общин Османского Египта и Османской Сирии во время экспедиции Бонапарта (1798–1801 гг.). Особое внимание уделено замыслам Бонапарта и его преемников на посту главнокомандующего по привлечению египетских и сирийских христиан к сотрудничеству с французской оккупационной администрацией в качестве чиновников и солдат вспомогательных военных отрядов. Также в статье рассматривается французская пропаганда в сопоставлении с практическими действиями в отношении египетских коптов и сирийских христиан наряду с ответной реакцией со стороны как христианских общин, так и мусульманского большинства населения Османского Египта и Османской Сирии. Выявлены противоречия и двойственность политики Бонапарта и его преемников на посту главнокомандующего Восточной армии – Клебера и Мену в отношении местных христиан. Французское командование рассматривало восточных христиан как потенциальных союзников, но в то же время не решалось выражать к ним особые симпатии, поскольку подобные действия могли вызвать возмущение среди мусульманского большинства населения и создать впечатление, что французы ведут религиозную войну против ислама и мусульман. В статье сделан вывод о том, что эта непоследовательность стала одной из причин неудачи египетской экспедиции Бонапарта, когда французская армия в ходе военных действий в Египте и Сирии оказалась отрезанной от Франции и в то же время не могла пополнять свои ряды добровольцами из числа местных жителей. The article examines the main aspects of the policy of the French military command in relation to the Christian communities of Ottoman Egypt and Ottoman Syria during the expedition of Bonaparte (1798–1801). Particular attention is paid to the plans of Bonaparte and his successors as commander-in-chief to attract Egyptian and Syrian Christians to cooperate with the French occupation administration as officials and soldiers of auxiliary military units. The article also examines French propaganda in comparison with practical actions towards Egyptian Copts and Syrian Christians, and the response from both Christian communities and the Muslim majority of the population of Ottoman Egypt and Ottoman Syria. The contradictions and ambiguity of the policy of Bonaparte and his successors as commander-in-chief of the Eastern Army – Kleber and Menou towards local Christians are revealed. The French command considered Eastern Christians as potential allies, but at the same time did not dare to express special sympathy for them, since such actions could cause outrage among the Muslim majority of the population and create the impression that the French are waging a religious war against Islam and Muslims. The article concludes that this inconsistency was one of the reasons for the failure of Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition, when the French army was cut off from France during the hostilities in Egypt and Syria and at the same time could not replenish its ranks with volunteers from among the local residents.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE ISLAMIC FACTOR ON THE STATE OF THE ARMED FORCES OF FRANCE

Nowadays France is a home to the largest Muslim community in Europe. Therefore, the issues of the relationship between government structures and adherents of Islam are of great importance for the country and they become a field for political confrontation especially because of the existing separation of spiritual and secular life. This means that Islamization of the armed forces of the Republic is also important. It is necessary to discover the level of army Islamization and spiritual needs satisfaction of soldiers, as well as the role of Muslim chaplains in army structures. Based on analysis of French laws, press and publications in scientific journals, the author discovers the changes that occurred in the Nation attitude to the issue of Muslims integration to the military system of the country and explains the reasons and content of some evolution stages of Muslim military chaplains institute in the French army since 2006.

Sovereignty, Democracy and Neutrality: French Foreign Policy and the National-Patriotic Humanitarianism of the French Red Cross, 1919–1928

Recent historiography pertaining to the International Red Cross has generally emphasised the transnational scale as best suited for analysing this global movement. Using the French Red Cross as a case study, this article suggests that focusing on the national scale, or even on the national-imperial scale, does not exclude transnational approaches but enriches them. In doing so, it highlights the dialectic between scales of humanitarian activity and complicates our understanding of the Red Cross movement in the early twentieth century. The article examines how the French Red Cross strived for its independence within the broader Red Cross world in a postwar humanitarian context increasingly dominated by transnational organisations. It also argues that in the 1920s the French Red Cross, a traditional auxiliary of the French army, became an arm of the French Foreign Office, advancing French diplomacy and sovereignty.

Texas, Mobile, and Wilson’s Raid

Civil wars in both the United States and Mexico during the 1850s–1860s fostered the most serious challenge to the Monroe Doctrine in American history. Taking advantage of Mexico’s internal troubles, Emperor Napoleon III of France installed a Hapsburg prince as the new emperor of Mexico. Although invited to intervene by Mexican conservatives, no one liked the prince who remained on the throne only at the point of thirty thousand French Army bayonets. The U.S. government tried to intimidate Napoleon to withdraw his troops by placing a small force in the lower Rio Grande Valley, but it failed to have an effect. Two campaigns closed the war in the West by capturing Mobile, Alabama, and destroying Confederate war industries in Alabama and Georgia before the Federals could shift large numbers of troops to Texas and finally bring an end to the French intervention in Mexico.

Jean de Lattre de Tassigny's strategy in Tonkin (Vietnam) during the First Indochina War (1950-1952)

Since 1950, the war in Indochina entered a fierce phase, especially in Tonkin (Vietnam). Viet Minh forces, supported by China and the Soviet Union, cornered the French expeditionary army and lost many important bases on the battlefield. That is why the US has increased its support for the French army in the war and at the same time trusted a very talented General of the French army, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny went to Indochina to implement a strategy to reverse the situation of the French army with a series of effective military policies. The strategies of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny caused many difficulties for the Viet Minh and the Indochina battlefield also had great changes. However, as his strategies were being implemented, he died in 1952 and the French army lost a man capable of turning the tide. The rise of the Viet Minh and the strength of the Vietnamese patriotism completely defeated the French army in 1954. This article refers to General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny's strategy in Tonkin (Vietnam) battlefield, thereby clarifying his military policies in the first Indochina war.

Returning the Sense of Security

Sixty-two years after Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign to Egypt, in August 1860 the port town of Toulon was once again busy for a French expedition to the Levant. This time the target destination was Syria. Unlike 1798, the French army in 1860 was accompanied by an international commission that consisted of the delegates of each major European Great Power and the Ottoman Empire. With the arrival of the French troops and international commissioners in Syria, the diplomatic struggle that started in the metropoles continued through incessant tensions over the limits of French military action and the European commissioners’ right to interfere with Ottoman authorities’ endeavours to suppress the violence. A new tussle at once began over how to return the sense of security in Syria. The commissioners received an influx of instructions from their capitals which repeatedly placed imperial objectives, suspicions, and their conflicting threat perceptions on the agenda while addressing the security problems in Syria. The men on the ground were thus torn between local realities and the expectations of their superiors. The retribution, indemnities, and administrative reorganization processes were consequently politicized, and bolted the fate of security in Syria onto the reconciliation of imperial interests. This chapter details the workings of the international commission on Syria in 1860–62, and describes how order and tranquillity was restored in the country.

God Below: A Faith Born in Hell—Life and Fate and the Otherwise Than Being

This essay examines the idea of kenosis and holy folly in the years before, during, and after the Holocaust. The primary focus will be Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, though it also will touch upon Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons and the ethics of the Lithuanian-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, speaking to their intersecting ideas. Dostoevsky, true enough, predates the Shoah, whereas Grossman was a Soviet Jew who served as a journalist (most famously at the Battle of Stalingrad), and Levinas was a soldier in the French army, captured by the Nazis and placed in a POW camp. Each of these writers wrestles with the problem of evil in various ways, Dostoevsky and Levinas as theists—one Christian, the other Jewish—and Grossman as an atheist; yet, despite their differences, there are ever deeper resonances in that all are drawn to the idea of kenosis and the holy fool, and each writer employs variations of this idea in their respective answers to the problem of evil. Each argues, more or less, that evil arises in totalizing utopian thought which reifies individual humans to abstractions—to The Human, and goodness to The Good. Each looks to kenosis as the “antidote” to this utopian reification.

The Characteristics of the Romanian Infantry Tactics during the Interwar Period

This article examines the main tactical characteristics of the Romanian infantry during the interwar period under the influence of the French principles, in the context in which the First World War proved the need to consider providing the units with a variety of technical equipment for a greater firepower on the battlefield. This article presents the basic forms of warfare according to the regulations of the time, defining the tactical rules of the battalion, presenting the new concepts that have emerged in the infantry tactics after the great world conflagration. It also presents aspects of subunit training, as well as the main technical characteristics of the infantry weaponry compared to that of the French army. On the other hand, it identifies the difficulties encountered in adapting the tactical principles of the French Regulations to the specificities of the Romanian infantry which had to take into account the physiognomy of a possible war, the troops available, but also the differences in army industry development.