ABSTRACT
In much of the traditional historiography the Napoleonic Wars are presented as a conflict that was primarily a European affair. In the form of the independence of Haiti, it was the Napoleonic Wars that produced the first victory in the struggle of what was to become the Third World’s struggle against colonialism. The Ottoman Empire, then, struggled on, while its chances of doing so were potentially much strengthened by the fact that the very year of the French Revolution brought to the throne a ruler who was wholeheartedly committed to reform. Only with the accession to the throne of Sultan Selim III in 1789 did the situation witness any real change. Born in 1761, the new ruler was comparatively young when he came to the throne, while by Ottoman standards he was extremely well educated, his father having been the equally reformist, but far less successful, Mustafa III.
