Travels Through Syria & Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, & 1785

by Constantin-François de Chassebœuf de Volney

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958 pages, Hardcover

First published January 12, 2010

About the author

Constantin-François Chassebœuf de La Giraudais, comte Volney, dit Volney est un philosophe et orientaliste français.

Constantin-François de Chassebœuf de Volney is one of those historical personalities once famous in their own day but now largely forgotten. You’ve heard of people he knew, as well as the events he participated in, but you’ve never heard of the man himself.

Ever hear of Benjamin Franklin? Franklin, then Ambassador to Paris, mentored a young Volney in the years prior to the French Revolution and later introduced him to his successor, Thomas Jefferson.

Ever hear of the Estates General and the Tennis Court Oath? Volney took part in both events and later sat on the committee that wrote the first French constitution.

Ever hear of Napoleon Bonaparte? Volney discovered a young Bonaparte on the island of Corsica and helped his career on numerous occasions, including the 18 Brumaire coup that brought Bonaparte to power. Ever hear of the proclamation of the Empire when Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor? Volney was one of only three senators to vote against that counter-revolutionary bill.

Ever hear of the Alien Act in the United States? Volney, the most famous alien in the U.S. at that time, was forced to leave the country just before the new law went into effect.

Ever hear of an ideologue? Volney was one of the original Ideologues. The Ideologues supported constitutional government, separation of church and state, Adam Smith’s economic principles, abolition of slavery and universal suffrage. They were also correspondents with—again that famous name—Thomas Jefferson.

But those are all good things. So why is there a pejorative attached to the word ideologue today?

It’s because the Ideologues opposed Bonaparte’s dynastic designs. As a result Bonaparte started using the word almost as a curse and, a generation later, Karl Marx—recognizing the theories the Ideologues espoused refuted his own theories—picked up Bonaparte’s pejorative and spread it around the world.

Ever hear of Volney’s Ruins of Empires? Uh, well, no, you probably haven’t. But the book (“Les Ruines” in French) was once world famous—or infamous depending on your point of view.

You’ve heard of Thomas Jefferson of course. But I’ll bet you didn’t know Jefferson liked the book so much he secretly translated it into English. Ever hear of Abraham Lincoln? Lincoln read Volney’s Ruins as a young man and was deeply affected by it. Ever hear of Walt Whitman? Whitman’s most famous poem, Leaves of Grass, was directly inspired by Volney’s Ruins. Ever hear of Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River Valley School? His famous paintings—The Voyage of Life and Course of Empire series—were also directly inspired by Volney’s Ruins.

So why are both Volney and his book largely forgotten today? There are many reasons. But first and foremost it’s because he challenges the fundamental principles of both the Left and the Right.

The Left doesn’t like Volney because Ruins of Empires was written as a direct refutation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract. If you refute the Social Contract, then you refute Socialism and all the various “social models” in Europe (and elsewhere) built upon it. Volney, therefore, has few if any friends among the left-leaning professorial class—the ones who are supposed to teach “enlightenment” to students.

The Right doesn’t like Volney because Ruins of Empires presents a solution to the world’s enduring religious conflicts. While that’s certainly a good thing—and particularly so in a post-September 11 world—the Right still considers Volney to be a heretic and an atheist. Why? Because Ruins of Empires argues for a universal code of morality based on the physical laws of nature. While that sounds innocuous, it implicitly calls into question all other codes of morality based on the existence of some invisible being no one has ever seen—i.e. “God.”

In sum, Volney has been forgotten

Reviews

[Yann · Rating 5 out of 5]

L'Anjou 1781. Devenu par héritage le maître d'un capital dont il sentait qu'il était trop faible pour en faire des rentes, et trop fort pour le dissiper dans des frivolités, l'auteur, déjà touché par le goût de l'étude désira ouvrir une plus grande carrière à son éducation. Le projet d'un voyage, moyen le plus propre d'orner l'esprit et de former le jugement l'emporta, et c'est la Syrie et l’Égypte qu'il choisit, attendu que ces contrées furent le berceau des lois, des religions et des principes qui nous gouvernent encore. Cet ouvrage est donc le compte rendu de ce voyage, à la veille de la révolution, mais au lieu d'une galerie de tableaux exotiques et nouveaux, destinés à amuser et captiver le lecteur, Volney dessine le portrait le plus exact, le plus lucide et le plus instructif qui soit sur l'état de ces contrées, que ce soit de la géographie, de la politique, des lois, des arts, des mœurs, de la religion. Si d'autres de voyageurs se passionnaient exclusivement pour les ruines antiques, il a surtout en tête l'état présent des pays qu'il a sous les yeux, et ne songe pas de repos avant d'en avoir démêlé les véritables causes. Il ne ménagea pas sa peine pour apprendre l'arabe dans la retraite d'un monastère. Il se lie si bien à la population que les bédouins qu'il fréquente le poussent à les suivre et adopter leur mode de vie nomade. On lit avec satisfaction la destruction du préjugés ridicule de "L'esprit des lois" de Montesquieu suivant lequel en raison d'un climat chaud, les peuples devaient être nécessairement indolents et soumis au despotisme. Ces régions n'accueillirent elles pas les plus formidables empires de l'antiquité? S'il loue l’absence d'alcoolisme et l'hospitalité des locaux, il montre par la rigueur jointe de l'observation et du raisonnement quels sont les suites néfastes du manque d'instruction d'une élite absorbée dans le luxe et les vanités, du poids de la superstition qui établit un esprit de soumission, de l'injustice qui corrompt tous les rouages de la société, d'un fatalisme auquel sont réduits des hommes pour lesquels l'horizon de toute ambition est le risque de vexer un puissant, et de retrouver dépouillé pour meilleur sort. L'architecture du livre est si adroite et solide, chaque raisonnement est si bien assis que le lecteur ne peut que se rendre à la démonstration avec le plaisir et la reconnaissance d'avoir été rendu plus familier aux Mamelouks, Coptes, Druzes, Turkmans, Kourdes, Maronites, Grecs, Arabes et Bédouins. Volney n'usurpa ni son fauteuil d'académicien, ni sa chaire dans la jeune école normale.

[Ahmad · Rating 2 out of 5]

رجل أبيض ، معه بعض الفلوس ، عمل رحلة ، وكتب بعض الملاحظات التي تحتاج كثيرا من التدقيق ، نَفَس هذا الرجل الابيض المتشبِع بالفوقية في الكتاب يفوح في كل صفحة ، لا أحب هذا النوع من الرحالة الغربيين ، يستفزونني بشكل مطلق . إذا كان أي شخص يسعى لتوثيق أحداث تاريخية جرت في مصر وبلاد الشام في منتصف القرن 18 فالكتاب جيد للمقارنة مع مراجع أخرى، أما محبين القراءة لمجرد القراءة -مِثلي- فلا انصحهم به لأنه مبعثر .

[Mustafa Kaya]

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