Ian Coller's book uncovers a striking history of Arabs in nineteenth-century France and presents a complex set of interactions between that heterogeneous population and a French society in the making. Coller claims Arab France is a contribution to the history of Islam and Muslims in French history, yet he argues that Islam and Europe, “transnational concepts” at the heart of this study, did less to shape this Arab France than did the post-revolutionary national zeitgeist (p. 10). His research and conclusions suggest otherwise, and the book reveals that religious divides and spurious notions about Arab identity plagued the population. Coller further argues that Arab France is “neither hypothetical nor actual” but rather an “intentional act of seeing” (p. 2). In many ways this assertion mourns the idea of Arab France and denies any resonance of that legacy in the contemporary locales of French society. Still, the work is an important unearthing of long-forgotten figures that lived in France before the height of colonial domination – something Coller rightly argues is missing from current studies.
The strength of the book lies in these uncoverings and in the breadth of archival material culled. Coller's work yields personal letters, petitions, political correspondences, and even poetry and visual art, a collective which, he suggests, has been “mute and hardly decipherable” (p. 1). It is clear that his study focuses mainly on upper-class elites. The archival research offers glimpses into the personal experiences of “notable” individuals such as Ellious Bochtor, Gabriel Taouïl, and Rafa'i al Tahtawi, some of whom the author describes as “Arab Orientalists”, a designation that describes their contribution to French letters. Coller contends that there were ongoing transcultural exchanges that challenged the notion of “an uncrossable divide between Europe and the Muslim world” (p. 13). Unfortunately, that binary remains clear, and Coller's effort to “address a space occluded from Said's analysis of East and West” is compromised by the writing of people like Joseph Agoub, who demonstrates a continual struggle with identity (p. 13). Repeatedly, Coller challenges Edward Said's arguments in what seems like an attempt to free the concept of Orientalism, but he is less successful here, and the text ultimately reveals that the roots and reach of Orientalism were firmly planted in this era.
Chapter 2, “A rough crossing”, begins with the arrival of the “réfugiés égyptiens”, who are banded together by what Coller describes as “Cultural Arabism”. The chapter reveals a multifaceted community whose self-perception contrasted with “Napoleonic French ideas about Arab nationalism” (p. 37). Chapters 2 and 3, “Ports of call” and “The making of Arab Paris”, map the circumstances and dynamics that led to the shaping of Arab France. Coller emphasizes the heterogeneity of these “Egyptians” who were, in fact, Syrian, Greek, Egyptian, Muslim and Christian, some from Palestine, the Sudan and other places in North Africa. They came from every social station, and Coller suggests that the subsequent move to a singular Arab identity was tied to the changes in French political stance and the shifting nature of French citizenship. While he does not stress this point, the text shows that there were clear marks of social privilege that allowed for mobility, which resulted in a “new Arab elite” or “notables” who were distinguished from poor refugees (p. 85). The divisions maintained ultimately shaped the existence of the population according to socioeconomic class – this demarcation becomes more of a factor in Arab France than Coller suggests.
In the next two chapters, “Policing orientalism” and “Massacre and restoration”, Coller reveals that Arabs who did not conform were relegated to the margins and the “limits of cosmopolitanism in Napoleonic France” (p. 99). In extreme cases, as with the 1815 massacre in Marseilles, they were brutally killed. Coller notes that there was a significant shift in the visibility of the culture after the massacre, including conversions from Islam and name changes, and the text offers evidence pointing to early aggressive policing of non-Christian Arabs. He also explores the participation of Arabs in French cultural politics after a decade in the country as “new Frenchmen”, and his investigations show that the “notables” in France forged a powerful alignment with Orientalists. His final chapters reveal that the burgeoning French society had, in fact, led to a “gap between ‘Egyptian’ representations and Arab realities” in which France would tolerate Arab Christians and reject Islam (p. 142).
The last chapters explore the political and identity transformations that occurred before the revolution of 1830. “Cosmopolitanism and confusion” and “Remaking Arab France” examine the mobility of Egyptians and a new Arab France attempting to locate itself. We see the likes of Joseph Agoub, whose self-perception was rooted in identity struggle, shift to an admiration for Arab Islamic roots. “The Cathedral and the Mosque” presents the new course for Arab France and proves to be an arresting chapter on French imperialism in Algeria. Here we see that the politicization of Arab identity prompts a new resistance. Coller claims that “Arab France – that space in which it was possible to be both French and Arab at once – no longer existed”, but his research leads us to believe that such a place never quite emerged – not for Agoub, Tahtawi, or Taouïl (p. 208). By the conclusion, it is clear that the so-called “notable Arabs” are the individuals whose lives we have followed, and while their “personal trajectories” steer an understanding of the broader experience, we are left with a stronger sense of the absent voices of the book's marginal figures than we are with the bequest of these men. Coller's range of nomenclature, including French Arab, Arab Jew, Arab Frenchmen, Francophone Arab, Arabist Intellectual, Arab Orientalist, and Pan Arab, among others, conveys more a sense of grasping for place than the actuality of multiple locations of identities. The author suggests that this book, in some ways, pays respect to the memories of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, teenagers killed while being pursued by French police in 2005. While it stands as an important and engaging contribution to the history of Arabs in Europe, an account that is primarily about an elite group of Arabic speakers is an unlikely homage to the Arab France currently residing in poverty on the outskirts of Paris.
