ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth century the European imperial powers began encroaching on the Muslim world. As the Mughal Empire crumbled in the first half of that century, France and then Britain began to pick up the pieces. Before the century’s end, Britain, after virtually eliminating France as a rival, became the dominant power in the subcontinent. Napoleon’s seizure of Lower (northern) Egypt in mid-1798 from the Mamluk beys, the quasi-sovereign rulers of the Ottoman province, loosened their grip on the district. The French troops Napoleon left behind in 1799 capitulated two years later to a combined Anglo-Ottoman force and were allowed to return to France under the armistice terms. The Ottoman experience bore only a moderate resemblance to the Egyptian. The Egyptian program in its most flourishing phase under Mehmed Ali, whatever the secondary effects, was designed to fulfill only one purpose: to expand the military and political power of the empire-builder.
