If Fossils Could Talk Balzac, Napoleon, and North Africa

This article situates Une passion dans le désert at the intersection between natural history and Napoleonic history, a convergence that Balzac saw as a particular threat of the past taking hold of the present. The associated importance of the figure of the Jew connects this reflection on history to a larger motif: the author’s anxiety over Jewish influence, the theory of degeneration, and French imperialism.