Regional and imperial characteristics

 

Zooming in on metropolitan France (figure 4) shows that Marseille played a special role in migrations to Egypt, with the port city named as the place of birth or the former place of residence for more than 1000 out of 15,000 journeys – against a little over 650 for the much larger capital city of Paris. With more than 200 journeys, the neighbouring port of Toulon was also over-represented. The map also suggests, however, that migration to Egypt was more than a local phenomenon; it involved almost all French regions, although migrants were much more likely to hail from the south-eastern half of the country than the industrial north or the Atlantic west – with the partial exception of Brittany, due to the significant number of French sailors whose death was recorded in Egypt.

Conversely, zooming out to consider these migrations on a global scale (figure 5) highlights the significance of imperial connections in movements of French nationals to Egypt. Algeria was especially important, with more than 200 journeys from or via the city of Algiers alone. The movements from Algeria to Egypt captured by French civil registration mostly involved European settlers, but a significant number resulted from the registration of marriages of French Muslim subjects; hence, for instance, the more than 50 journeys from or via Tlemcen, a city with few European settlers but a major source of Algerian emigration to the Ottoman world in the nineteenth century. Similarly, journeys from the Caribbean dominate the connections to the Americas, with eleven journeys from Martinique and other Leeward islands, and even one journey from Haiti – although the country’s name was still recorded as “Saint-Domingue” in the 1881 record of the death of fifty-eight year old Hélène Deville, seventy-seven years after the country’s effective independence. And there were nearly 100 journeys from or via Saigon, in the new French colony of Cochinchina.  

Zooming back in on Egypt (figure 6) shows that expatriates mostly resided in major urban centres: Alexandria, Cairo, and cities of the Suez Canal area (Port-Said, Ismailia and Suez), although it is also possible that the births, marriages and deaths of French nationals outside this area were less likely to be registered in French consulates.