Table Of Contentthe first eu ro pean
T H E F I R ST EU ROPE A N
A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire
PIERRE BRIANT
Translated by
Nicholas Elliott
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2017
Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
First printing
First published as Alexandre des lumières: Fragments d’histoire européenne
by Pierre Briant © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2012.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Briant, Pierre, author.
Title: Th e fi rst Eu ro pean : a history of Alexander in the age of empire /
Pierre Briant ; translated by Nicholas Elliott.
Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2017. |
“First published as Alexandre des lumières. Fragments d’histoire européenne
by Pierre Briant © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2012.”— Title page verso |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2016009269 | ISBN 9780674659667 (hard cover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Alexander, the Great, 356 B.C.—323 B.C. | Hellenism— Infl uence. |
Hellenism— Historiography. | History, Ancient— Historiography. |
Europe— Intellectual life—18th century. | Greece— History— Macedonian
Expansion, 359–323 B.C.— Historiography.
Classifi cation: LCC DF234.2 .B74713 2017 | DDC 938/.0707204— dc23
LC rec ord available at http:// lccn . loc . gov / 2016009269
Contents
Preface to the English- Language Edition vii
Introduction: Fragments of Eu ro pean History 1
i. a critical history
1. History, Morals, and Philosophy 19
2. Alexander in Eu rope: Erudition and History 50
ii. the conqueror- philosopher
3. War, Reason, and Civilization 93
4. A Successful Conquest 133
5. Affi rming and Contesting the Model 158
iii. empires and nations
6. Lessons of Empire, from the Th ames to the Indus 193
7. Alexander in France from the Revolution to the
Restoration 221
8. German Alexanders 259
vi contents
iv. the sense of history
9. Aft er Alexander? 283
10. Alexander, Eu rope, and the Immobile Orient 305
C onclusion 340
Bibliography 349
Notes 411
Acknowl edgments 471
Index 473
Preface to the English- Language Edition
Th is book for En glish readers diff er s slightly from the volume published in
Paris by Gallimard in 2012 under the title Alexandre des Lumières: Fragments
d’histoire européenne. Like that one, this volume focuses on the fi gure of
Alexander as “First Eu ro pean” from the Introduction onward. Th e book’s
general structure, which is in four parts, is identical. However, in order to con-
form to the format planned by Harvard University Press, I have trimmed
parts of the text, particularly in the fi rst part of the French edition. Th e fi rst
four chapters have been condensed into a single chapter (Chapter 1), with-
out—I hope—a ltering the coherence of the argument. Th e next two chapters
of the French edition (5 and 6) have been combined into Chapter 2. Chap-
ters 7 and 9 of the French edition have been cut, but some of their argu-
ments have been included in Chapters 3, 5, and 7 of the American edition.
Chapters 3–10 of this edition can thus be considered identical to t hose in the
French edition (4 and 6–10) or extremely close to it (3, 5, 7); the same is true of
Chapter 2, with the exception of a few changed details. In the French edition,
the numerous quotations were presented in French, including those taken
from Eng lish and German works, e ither b ecause I had used preexisting
translations or had translated them myself. For this American edition, I have
returned to the original texts of those works published in En glish. I have used
En glish translations of French and German works when they were available,
which was most oft en the case.
Concerning my text in and of itself, the only notable addition is a passage
on the repres ent at ions of Alexander at the court of Philip V of Spain in
Chapter 1. Other than that, I have added references in the Notes and
B ibliography to studies that have appeared since 2011, but did not attempt to
viii preface to the english- language edition
go overboard in completing what was already very abundant documenta-
tion. To my knowledge, very few of the books and articles published recently
deal directly with the subject I am addressing— outside, of course, of the re-
views of the French edition.1 I w ill primarily mention the biography of the
Baron de Sainte- Croix by Stefania Montecalvo,2 in which one can now fi nd
exhaustive documentation of one of the greatest erudite writers of the
eigh teenth century, a man who made a fundamental contribution to the
history of Alexander and its interpretation, as I show in Chapters 2 and 7.
Another book deserves to be mentioned at this point, despite the fact that it
deals with an earlier period: Vincent Barletta’s Death in Babylon, which,
though published in 2010, had previously escaped my attention.3 As the
subtitle indicates (Alexander the Great and Iberian Empire in the Muslim Orient),
the author discusses issues close to those I have addressed, in the context of
the expansion of Spain and Portugal against the Islamic powers of Africa
and Asia during the fi ft eenth and sixteenth centuries: “Th e ghost of Alex-
ander is intricately related to Eur op ean, and more specifi cally Iberian, co-
lonial adventures that took place in Muslim Africa and Asia during the
fi ft eenth and sixteenth century” (201). In a way, the author traverses the
Iberian fi ft eenth and sixteenth centuries on the trail of the images of Alex-
ander constructed and i magined by the p eople of the time, as I do for the
Eu ro pean long eigh teenth century.4 Th is comparison does not detract from
the specifi city of the Alexander of the Enlightenment largely constructed
by Montesquieu and those historians and phi los o phers whom he infl u-
enced in E ngl and, Scotland, Germany, and France (the four countries at the
heart of my investigation), but it serves as a reminder that the use of the
Macedonian king as a prec ed ent for Eur op ean expansion began in Eur ope
in the Middle Ages, including in the context of the Crusades led or imagined
against the “Infi dels”— particularly at the court of the dukes of Burgundy.
Given the proliferation in recent years of studies both partial and inno-
vative,5 a most int ere sti ng f uture proje ct would be to provide a synthesis of
the “Eu ro pean” Alexander from the Middle Ages to the pres ent day, without
omitting to include such a study in a global perspective, given the extent to
which the fi gure of Iskender/Aliksandar/Sikandar has remained alive in
the lit er a tures and imagination of people from Egypt to Java. I will attempt
to make my own modest contribution to this eff ort in a forthcoming volume.6
the first eu ro pean
