Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern France, 1798–1831 by Ian Coller (review)

training, Carrithers notes additional points. Charles XII of Sweden and Cromwell in England show that great people can change events and redirect the course of history. The accidents of history may produce surprising results. History is also at the root of Montesquieu’s religious beliefs, according to Oake. Montesquieu admired the civic religion of the early Romans, and he saw religion as a social activity with utilitarian dimensions. Thus, Schaub maintains, Montesquieu favored toleration. However, state tolerance of all religions was less problematic than mutual tolerance by different religions. According to Grimsley, Montesquieu believed that reason could justify the toleration of any socially useful religion, although he also accepted non-rational arguments. Above all, people must avoid gross superstition and fanaticism. All the articles in the volume are written in English, although some may use quotations in French. They are reproduced as they originally appeared in the journals . Thus one sees a variety of printing styles and notes. An impressive, cumulative bibliography is included at the end of the introduction. While these articles are available in the original journals and many of them electronically, the collection provides an invaluable tool to the researcher, who can immediately find a wealth of information from noted scholars in one place. The cost may be prohibitive to individuals, but libraries and specialists would do well to invest in this book. The volume makes an important contribution to Montesquieu studies. Chestnut Hill College (PA) Mary Helen Kashuba COLLER, IAN. Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern France, 1798–1831. Berkeley: UP of California, 2011. ISBN 978-0-520-2606-58. Pp. 304. $24.95. Ian Coller’s Arab France is an historical study of the first sizable influx of “Orientals” into France in 1801 following Napoleon’s ill-fated Egyptian campaign. The diversity of this group of some seven hundred men plus a small number of women and children made up of Coptic Christians, Egyptian Muslims, Syrian Melchites, Greeks, Sudanese, and Palestinians is underscored by the author in an attempt to resurrect from a lost history the pluralistic past that existed in France at the very time it was transforming itself into an imperialistic nation. Although the title seems to attribute an explicit role to the Islamic religion among this early group of Arab immigrants, in fact, what linked this group of “Égyptiens,” as they were called, was almost exclusively the Arabic language. The word “Islam” in the title is misleading and refers not to the religion but to the Islamic world—or the “Islamicate”—from which these “émigrés” came. These Arab populations left few or no written accounts or records of their life in exile in France, which is why the author sought to determine what life was like for these refugees, post 1801, through their personal correspondence; official letters written to different ministries, notably the Bureau of Pensions, imploring their due as former soldiers in Napoleon’s Grande Armée; and other unofficial documents. This Arab community, which Coller terms “Arab France,” was linked by ties of mutual interest, family, friendship, and cultural practices. A social network developed between the large community of “Égyptiens” in Marseille, through the Arab military population stationed in the “caserne” at Melun, to an Arab intellectual elite in Paris. These early Arabs in France, even those in Paris, seem to have left no descriptions of their community or of their lifestyles in their Reviews 571 land of adoption. Moreover, there are no written reactions to or accounts of their presence by French writers of the time, in particular of the first three decades of the nineteenth century, the period of the birth of modern Orientalism and of romantic exoticism as witnessed in the works of Delacroix, Géricault, Hugo, and others. Things changed for the Arab population in France at the end of the Empire. The notions of “Égyptien” and “Oriental” became equated to “foreigner” and caused them to be targeted and made unwelcome during the Restoration period. The backdrop of Coller’s work can be defined as the Orientalism made famous by Edward Said, whose theories he engages yet goes beyond in his attempt to find an authentic, personal voice for the early “Orientals” in...