The Eastern Question

The expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt in 1798 is a key event in the development of the Eastern Question, comparable, in its momentous consequences, to the Treaty of Kuchuk Kaynarja of 1774. In the Directory's instructions to Bonaparte only the first aspect of the threat to India was mentioned and, whatever Bonaparte or his apologists said later, there is no evidence that in 1798-9 he contemplated a direct invasion of India. Instead of the eastern alliance against Russia Napoleon entered into a series of fantastic discussions with Russia about a joint invasion of India and a partition of the Ottoman Empire. The outcome of latter tendency has an emphasis on the Ottoman Empire in the Eastern Question; the problem is not in terms of determination and impersonal forces of economics or nationalism but in the choices of men, made in the turmoil of events with imperfect information and with all the weight of prejudice to which men is subject.