Plague, Politics, and Napoleonic Propaganda c. 1800

Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa

Our spring 2020 virtual lecture series on the plague in European history closed out with a lecture by David O'Brien, Professor of Art History. Dr. O'Brien's lecture focused on an outbreak of plague that occurred in 1799 among the French army during Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Expedition, Napoleon's response, and parallels with the current COVID-19 pandemic. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, plague was a regular occurrence in Egypt. What made this particular outbreak remarkable, Dr. O'Brien noted, was the way that it was (mis)represented by Bonaparte and his propagandists.

The lecture began with Dr. O'Brien providing an overview of Napoleon's Egyptian Expedition and emphasizing that it was a military failure. However, Napoleon managed to transform this failed military campaign into a propagandistic tool and a source for scholarly and artistic inspiration. One of the most famous examples of the latter was the above 1804 painting by Antoine-Jean Gros, titled Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa and commissioned by Napoleon himself.

Dr. O'Brien went on to discuss Napoleon's immediate reactions to the plague outbreak in 1799 and his later attempts at propaganda, as seen in the 1804 painting — as well as some interesting similarities with today's public response to the COVID-19 crisis. The full lecture can be watched below: