Urbain has been largely attributed as the source of the arabophilia of Napoleon III, to whom he was a personal adviser. He corresponded with many key political, military and cultural people in the Algeria of his time. In an 1857 article in Revue de Paris Urbain denounced the term "Kabylie" as an invention due to the French spirit of systematization, used neither by the Arabs nor by the Berbers of Algeria. In 1861 he published under the pen name Georges Voisin L’Algérie pour les Algériens (Algeria for the Algerians), in which he defends the idea of an Arab Kingdom that Napoleon III, influenced by the ideas of the Saint-Simonists, had wanted to implement at the instigation of Urbain, but which was fiercely opposed by the colonists and economic interests in Algeria. The renewed attacks by Urbain in 1870 in L’Algérie française: indigènes et immigrants (French Algeria: natives and immigrants) provoked very violent agitation in the colony. The writings of Urbain aroused such passionate reactions that they almost completely overshadowed the ideas which were developed in the ensuing polemics.Levallois, pp. 620 ff.
