The Center for International Programs at Oakland University will host a lecture, “From Bonaparte to Bush: Western-Backed Revolutions in the Middle East,” by Juan Cole, professor of history at University of Michigan. The lecture will take place Tuesday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m. in the Oakland Center Banquet Rooms.
Cole is the author of several books including the recently released “Napoleon’s Egypt” and 2002’s “Sacred Space and Holy War,” and he is the creator of the widely read blog Informed Comment, which daily tracks and analyzes events in Iraq and surrounding regions. His lecture will connect some dots between past and present in the Euro-American encounter with the Middle East, beginning with Napoleon’s ill-fated 1798 invasion of Egypt, justified with the ideals of France’s new-found republicanism and the goal of liberating a benighted people from their evil oppressors. Cole argues that this, the first full-scale invasion of a Middle Eastern country by a modern European army, and the resistance it unexpectedly faced on the part of the local inhabitants, perhaps prefigured the experience of subsequent Western occupiers down to our present day.
Refreshments and a book signing will follow the lecture, which is free and open to the public. For more information, call OU’s Center for International Programs at (248) 370-2154.