Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East

Cover
Contents
List of Maps
Preliminary Note
	Places and Provinces
	Names and Spellings
	Rayas, Millets, and Franks
	The East India Company
Introduction
	The Lands, Their Rulers, and Their Aggressors
	Strategies and Visions
	The Claims of Chronology
	A Tale of Two Obelisks
Chapter 1. Napoleon, India, and the Battle for Egypt
	Grenville, the Eurocentric Approach, and Sidney Smith
	Dundas, India, and the Blue Water Strategy
Chapter 2. Sealing off Egypt and the Red Sea
	The Search for Stability in Egypt, 1801–3
	Egyptian Chaos, the French Threat, and the British Response, 1803–7
	The Red Sea: Popham and Valentia, Arabs and Abyssinians
Chapter 3. Striving for Leverage in Baghdad
	Harford Jones: Failure of the Dundas Strategy
	Claudius Rich: Pomp and Mediation in an Indian Outstation
	The Wahhabi, the Qawasim, and British Sea Power in the Gulf
	“Our Koordistan”: The Extraordinary Ambitions of Claudius Rich
	Rich’s Legacy
Chapter 4. Filling the Arabian Vacuum: Steam, the Arabs, and the Defence of India in the 1830s
	Ottoman Collapse and Russian Threat
	Steam and Plague: Progress and Decay
	Steamers and Arabs in Mesopotamia
	Steam, the Red Sea, and Southern Arabia
	Hobhouse, Palmerston, the Middle East, and India
Chapter 5. Britain, Egypt, and Syria in the Heyday of Mehmet Ali
	Samuel Briggs and the Afterlife of the Levant Company
	Economic and Cultural Exchanges
	Steam and the Two Faces of Mehmet Ali’s Egypt
	Benthamism, Islam, and the Pursuit of Good Government in Egypt
	Syria, Liberalism, and the Russian Threat to Asia
	New Voices on Syria: Embassy Ottomanists and Christian Tourists
Chapter 6. Constantinople, London, the Eastern Crisis, and the Middle East
	David Urquhart, Islam, and Free Commerce
	Factional Gridlock at Constantinople
	Ending the Stalemate
	Britain, France, and the Future of Syria
	Reshid, Richard Wood, and the Edict of Gülhane
	Napier or Wood, Smith or Elgin, Cairo or Constantinople?
Chapter 7. The Brief History of British Religious Sectarianism in Syria and Kurdistan
	Protestant Missions and Eastern Christians
	Jerusalem, City of Sin
	The Appeal to Jews and Its Limits
	The War of Institutional Christianity over Syria
	The Druze and the Perils of Sectarianism in Syria
	The Nestorians of Kurdistan
Chapter 8. Confining the Sectarian Problem: Syria, Kurdistan, France, and the Porte
	Finding a Balance in Lebanon
	Persecution, Protestantism, and the Tanzimat
	Institutionalising Protestant Weakness
	The Problem of Order in Kurdistan
	Britain, France, and Religious Protection in the New Kurdistan
Chapter 9. Stratford Canning and the Politics of Christianity and Islam
	Canning, Russia, and Islam
	Palmerston, Canning, and the Liberal Project
	Henry Layard and the Lessons of Nineveh
Chapter 10. The Ring of Steam, the Lands of Islam, and the Search for Order
	Ottoman Sovereignty and the Persian Border
	Conflicts with Ottomanism: Muhammara and the Gulf
	Steam Power, Economic Improvement, and Regional Security in Baghdad
	Aden: A New Centre of Stability
	The French, the Ottomans, and the Western Red Sea Harbours
Chapter 11. The British Corridor in Egypt
	England in Egypt, Egypt in England
	Mehmet Ali and the Transit
	Abbas and the Railway Project
	A Rage for Order
	The French and the Sultan
Chapter 12. Jerusalem and the Crimean War
	Unholy Places
	Whose War?
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index