For the second year, the lecture will analyze relations between East and West. It aims to reconstruct the archaeology of the distinctive feature of the contemporary Arab East: the interplay of interventions and interference. Two types of relationship structure the link between internal and external actors. The former can demand action from the latter, thereby strengthening their position on the local scene: they want them to intervene. A second type is interference, i.e. the violent intrusion of the external actor on the local scene, without the consent of the local partners. One and the other, then, are but two forms taken by similar relationships. Of course, material and power interests explain why European powers act on the Eastern stage. But they alone cannot explain the nature of the relationship. The formation of public opinion in Europe and the Levant helped forge new representations and motivations, soon to be described as humanitarian. Thus, a triangulation links diplomacy, internal political games within the Ottoman Empire and its provinces (Egyptian in particular) and public opinion. The latter gave rise to the question of the Orient.
If there is a question, it is in a form that can receive no easy answer or solution. Each moment of crisis - born of a microlocal conflict relayed by the agents of the powers (the consuls) - gives rise to a redefinition of everyone's positions - the great powers among themselves in a relationship of strength, the great powers with the various local protagonists in a relationship of domination, the literati and scholars in a relationship of knowledge at the basis of new representations. This second instalment of "Encounters between East and West" attempts to retrace the new scansions of Eastern crises between 1860 and 1882.