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.