The Egyptian Campaign and the Middle East

Abstract

The author of the essay* tells about the main milestones of more than two hundred years old historiography of the Egyptian campaign of 1798–1801, undertaken by the French land forces and navy under the general command of Napoleon Bonaparte, identifies the prerequisites that made such an audacious military enterprise possible, highlights the vicissitudes of the Egyptian and Syrian campaigns of Bonaparte’s Oriental Army, analyzes the motives of the decisive rejection by the local population of the values of the French Revolution, planted by the occupation administration, and establishes the reasons for the final catastrophic outcome of this expedition. The history of the Egyptian campaign is considered by the author in the general context of the evolution of international relations caused by the French Revolution and by the active expansion of revolutionary France. In his opinion, Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, which had as its main goal to undermine Britain’s position in the Middle East and Asia, led to exactly the opposite result than the one its initiators had hoped for: the British managed not only to stay in this region, but to gain dominant influence there, whereas France, having spent on this adventure large human and material resources, turned out to be almost completely displaced from there for some time.