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Overview
Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 showed how vulnerable India was to attack by France and Russia. It forced the British Empire to try to secure the two routes that a European might use to reach the subcontinent—through Egypt and the Red Sea, and through Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. Promised Lands is a panoramic history of this vibrant and explosive age.
Charting the development of Britain’s political interest in the Middle East from the Napoleonic Wars to the Crimean War in the 1850s, Jonathan Parry examines the various strategies employed by British and Indian officials, describing how they sought influence with local Arabs, Mamluks, Kurds, Christians, and Jews. He tells a story of commercial and naval power—boosted by the arrival of steamships in the 1830s—and discusses how classical and biblical history fed into British visions of what these lands might become. The region was subject to the Ottoman Empire, yet the sultan’s grip on it appeared weak. Should Ottoman claims to sovereignty be recognised and exploited, or ignored and opposed? Could the Sultan’s government be made to support British objectives, or would it always favour France or Russia?
Promised Lands shows how what started as a geopolitical contest became a drama about diplomatic competition, religion, race, and the unforeseen consequences of history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691231440 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/10/2024 |
| Pages: | 480 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
List of Maps xi
Preliminary Note xiii
Places and Provinces xiii
Names and Spellings xiv
Rayas, Millets, and Franks xvi
The East India Company xvii
Introduction 1
The Lands, Their Rulers, and Their Aggressors 1
Strategies and Visions 7
The Claims of Chronology 12
A Tale of Two Obelisks 19
Chapter 1 Napoleon, India, and the Battle for Egypt 22
Grenville, the Eurocentric Approach, and Sidney Smith 23
Dundas, India, and the Blue Water Strategy 36
Chapter 2 Sealing off Egypt and the Red Sea 46
The Search for Stability in Egypt, 1801-3 47
Egyptian Chaos, the French Threat, and the British Response, 1803-7 57
The Red Sea: Popham and Valentia, Arabs and Abyssinians 67
Chapter 3 Striving for Leverage in Baghdad 80
Harford Jones: Failure of the Dundas Strategy 82
Claudius Rich: Pomp and Mediation in an Indian Outstation 88
The Wahhabi, the Qawasim, and British Sea Power in the Gulf 98
"Our Koordistan": The Extraordinary Ambitions of Claudius Rich 103
Rich's Legacy 108
Chapter 4 Filling the Arabian Vacuum: Steam, the Arabs, and the Defence of India in the 1830s 111
Ottoman Collapse and Russian Threat 112
Steam and Plague: Progress and Decay 117
Steamers and Arabs in Mesopotamia 123
Steam, the Red Sea, and Southern Arabia 130
Hobhouse. Palmerston, the Middle East, and India 136
Chapter 5 Britain, Egypt, and Syria in the Heyday of Mehmet Ali 144
Samuel Briggs and the Afterlife of the Levant Company 145
Economic and Cultural Exchanges 149
Steam and the Two Faces of Mehmet Ali's Egypt 153
Benthamism, Islam, and the Pursuit of Good Government in Egypt 158
Syria, Liberalism, and the Russian Threat to Asia 161
New Voices on Syria: Embassy Ottomanists and Christian Tourists 168
Chapter 6 Constantinople, London, the Eastern Crisis, and the Middle East 174
David Urquhart, Islam, and Free Commerce 177
Factional Gridlock at Constantinople 182
Ending the Stalemate 185
Britain, France, and the Future of Syria 189
Reshid, Richard Wood, and the Edict of Gülhane 193
Napier or Wood, Smith or Elgin, Cairo or Constantinople? 198
Chapter 7 The Brief History of British Religious Sectarianism in Syria and Kurdistan 206
Protestant Missions and Eastern Christians 209
Jerusalem, City of Sin 215
The Appeal to Jews and Its Limits 219
The War of Institutional Christianity over Syria 224
The Druze and the Perils of Sectarianism in Syria 232
The Nestorians of Kurdistan 239
Chapter 8 Confining the Sectarian Problem: Syria, Kurdistan, France, and the Porte 249
Finding a Balance in Lebanon 251
Persecution, Protestantism, and the Tanzimat 257
Institutionalising Protestant Weakness 262
The Problem of Order in Kurdistan 264
Britain, France, and Religious Protection in the New Kurdistan 271
Chapter 9 Stratford Canning and the Politics of Christianity and Islam 278
Canning, Russia, and Islam 279
Palmerston, Canning, and the Liberal Project 283
Henry Layard and the Lessons of Nineveh 290
Chapter 10 The Ring of Steam, the Lands of Islam, and the Search for Order 298
Ottoman Sovereignty and the Persian Border 299
Conflticts with Ottomanism: Muhammara and the Gulf 304
Steam Power, Economic Improvement, and Regional Security in Baghdad 309
Aden: A New Centre of Stability 317
The French, the Ottomans, and the Western Red Sea Harbours 323
Chapter 11 The British Corridor in Egypt 334
England in Egypt, Egypt in England 335
Mehmet Ali and the Transit 341
Abbas and the Railway Project 346
A Rage for Order 349
The French and the Sultan 353
Chapter 12 Jerusalem and the Crimean War 356
Unholy Places 356
Whose War? 362
Conclusion 373
Acknowledgments 405
Bibliography 409
Index 435
What People are Saying About This
“Parry provides a lucid and compelling account of Britain’s engagement with the Ottoman Empire, from the British response to Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt to the outbreak of the Crimean War. Promised Lands is essential reading for historians of the period and indispensable for anyone with an interest in the modern history of the Middle East.”—Anthony Howe, author of Free Trade and Liberal England, 1846–1946“A wonderfully rich and evocative book that restores crucial but often neglected aspects of British thinking and policy in this region. Promised Lands is an impressive work of scholarship that is likely to become the authoritative account for understanding Britain’s foreign policy in the Middle East during the first half of the nineteenth century.”—Martyn Frampton, author of The Muslim Brotherhood and the West