#marwa elshakry

Incongruous though it may seem, this strange mystical sect also pioneered rather modern-sounding ideas of globalization and technological progress. The Saint-Simonians had emerged from post-Revolutionary Paris to proclaim a new philosophy of humanity: a religion of brotherhood ruled by a new technocratic class, the spiritual leaders of a global future that would merge industry, banking, and technology. Disciples of Comte Henri de Saint-Simon, the well-known early socialist and ardent positivist, and the proponent of a “New Christianity,” these visionaries took the philosophy of their master into uncharted territory.

After the trials, Père Enfantin and his followers embarked on a voyage across the Mediterranean, going first to Egypt and then to Algeria, to realize their utopia in the Mediterranean basin. It was there that they executed a number of their first large-­scale engineering projects, including several Nile barrages, canals, and polytechnics. Much like the globalization gurus of today, the Saint-Simonians called for greater cross-border transactions, more rapid international capital flow, and the diffusion of technology and tech­nological expertise. They helped finance and build railways and canals, constructed global communications and financial networks, and contributed crucially to the growing nineteenth century fascination with technological progress. And, as we shall see, they offer those who look to history a lesson in the unexpected consequences of technological utopianism.

The Saint-Simonians’ stay in Egypt was short-lived. Disease and the failure to find his female messiah led Enfantin back to Paris in 1836, after just three years. Nevertheless, he and his followers — including Ismaïl Urbain, a convert to Islam, and Suzanne Volquin, a journalist and early French feminist, had been instrumental in realizing a number of significant works in engineering and public in­struction. Their example equally inspired Mehmet Ali, the Albanian-born viceroy of Egypt under the Ottomans (often considered the founder of modern Egypt); he eventually constructed large-scale public works and generated a body of newly educated technocrats to man the extraordinary modernization of the state.

The Saint-Simonians had had high hopes for their collaboration with Mehmet Ali, whom they termed the Pacha industriel. Yet they failed to convince him of the viability or virtues of their pet project — a canal at Suez. It was not until a generation later that Ferdinand de Lesseps would manage to convince first Mummad Said Pasha and then Khedive Isma’il to undertake the scheme. Mehmet Ali had been much more concerned with constructing a system of barrages along the Nile, a task several Saint-Simonian engineers began in 1834. Others went on to found various schools and polytechnics, including an infantry school in Damiette, an artillery school in Thoura, and a cavalry school in Giza.

Enfantin returned to Paris in 1836. Some of his followers remained in Egypt; others traveled to Greece, Turkey, East Africa, and Mexico. They conducted scientific and geographical expeditions, aided in the financing of railroads, and oversaw a number of public works, including hospitals and schools. A few years later Enfantin was invited to join the Scientific Commission for the Colonization of Algeria and left for Algiers in December of 1839. Enfantin’s later published study — La colonisation de l’Algérie — was a curious blend of technocratic idealism, racial social science, and economic, industrial, and urban planning proposals. In it, he argued that a rational and centrally managed economic structure — his appeal here was largely to bankers and not to landowners — needed to be put in place in order to serve the goals of a mutually beneficial colonial “association” between France and Algeria — greater indus­trialization, social reform, and the migration of peoples and goods and skills and services.

In the case of the Arabic term for “science” (“‘ilm”), missionaries in Ottoman Beirut were among the first to reorient categories of knowledge—shifting, adding to, or subtracting from the common meanings of allied terms like “‘ilm,” “ma'arifa,” and “hikma',” which they helped to popularize as “science,” “knowledge,” and “wisdom,” respectively. In this formulation, knowledge was equated with matters of fact; science represented a higher order of truth in that it was the systematization of these facts through the derivation of natural laws; and, finally, wisdom, which was established by suprarational means, involved the Ultimate Truth.18 Missionaries thus effectively cleaved off a notion of “science” from broader categories of knowledge and made sharper distinctions between sensory or empirical knowledge and matters of belief. In the classical lexicon, in contrast, “‘ilm”—the broadest word for knowledge and one of the words most frequently found in the verses of the Qur'an—encompassed what would count as both knowledge and belief in their terms.