Locating the Ottomans in Napoleon’s World

Abstract

Historians writing about the 1798 French invasion of Egypt style Napoleon Bonaparte as the grand sultan (Sultan Kebir) and conqueror of Egypt.¹ By contrast, Ottoman Sultan Se lim III (1787–1807) has been viewed as weak, indecisive and incapable of implementing his visionary reform agenda, in a general condemnation of Ottoman feebleness that marks most of the well-known narratives. The Bonaparte invasion inaugurated an interventionist school of both British and French imperialism, a fumbling towards imperial methods, driven by their great power rivalries with Russia and later Prussia, but equally committed to a civilizing mission and the preferential markets represented by the sprawling Ottoman Empire.