L'Insurrection de l'Institut Amphibie. — the Pursuit of Knowledge
This is one of six prints from the series, Egyptian Sketches, created by Gillray in response to the French invasion of Egypt by Napoleon. For more information about the series as a whole, see my commentary on the title page, Egyptian Sketches.
The miitary objectives of Napoleon's invasion were to defeat and displace the ruling Mamelukes* and create a canal across Suez to facilitate attacks on British interests in India. But it was also part of Bonaparte's dream of establishing himself as the head of a far-flung Eastern Empire. Modelling himself on Alexander the Great who had brought along philosophers and wise men on his famous missions of conquest, Napoleon decided early on to bring with him to Egypt 150 savants—natural scientists, engineers, and scholars from all the major academic disciplines—to study the biology, geology, history, and culture of Egypt.
[March 12, 1799]
© Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
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Like comic prints by Bunbury and Rowlandson which delight in portraying pratfalls and disasters, the intrusion of the accidental upon the planned, and like later prints of Gillray's such as Scientific Researches. New Discoveries in Pneumatics (05/23/1802) and The Cow-Pock, or the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation (06/12/1802), Gillray here seems to delight in showing the unexpected revolt of nature against the orderly march of science, and the vivid contrast between French theory and Egyptian reality.
In the foreground, we see a French savant intent upon the domestication of Nile Crocodiles encountering some recalcitrance on the part of his subjects. On the ground next to him, we see a scholarly tome entitled "Sur l'Education du Crocodile" from which are falling sketches of the planned services of said crocodiles once they have been sufficiently "educated." Those services include pulling carriages upon land and small vessels upon the sea and (the ultimate experience) riding them with the saddle and bridle visible in the print. Unfortunately, these plans (and the leg) of the savant are apparently suffering some curtailment.
In the background, another revolutionary, the apparent author of "The Rights of Crocodiles," is being pursued by one of the local amphibians who seems to be as ungrateful for having his "rights" defended as the non-amphibian Egyptians.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on L'Insurrection de l'Institut Amphibie. - the Pursuit of Knowledge.
- Tim Clayton & Sheila O'Connell, Bonaparte and the British, 2015 #29, p. 81.
- Draper Hill, Fashionable Contrasts, 1966, #27
- "French campaign in Egypt and Syria," Wikipedia
- The Napoleonic Invasion of Egypt
- Thomas Wright and R.H. Evans, Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray #222
- Thomas Wright and Joseph Grego, The Works of James Gillray, the Caricaturist; With the History of His Life and Times p. 256.
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