Not So Criminal: New Understandings of Napoléon’s Foreign Policy in the East
2007, French Historical Studies
This article proposes a revision to the historiographical consensus that Napoleon's foreign policy was a boorish and uncompromising, even "criminal," enterprise. the east lured Napoleon all his life, not least because of the mania for the East and the heroes of classical antiquity during the enlightenment and because of the connected belief that victory in the east was the most glorious of military achievements. Strangely, however, after his failed campaign in Egypt in 1798 - 99 Napoleon never mounted any of the grand projects he continued to envisage for the East, most notably his various schemes to attack British India. Whereas historians tend, erroneously, to dismiss these ventures as unfeasible dreams, a close examination of Napoleon's diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Russia reveals a self-restraint and a more conventional approach to his relations with these states, both attitudes of which Napoleon was supposedly incapable.
Presumably the problem with Napoleon’s eastern ambitions on India is the lack of freedom of action on the high seas. This meant that conquest would either have to be contiguous with his empire or reliant on neighbouring alliances. Experience had shown how dangerous it was to rely on even Mediterranean lines of communication, without Russia as an ally the Black Sea might also prove difficult. A purely Eurasian land campaign using the Indus Valley would inevitably involve moving through or pacifying the area of Afghanistan. Recent experience has indicated what a particularly difficult task that would have been. The eastern empire of which he dreamed required the ability to globally project forces on the high seas. Breaking the Royal Navy’s dominance would be the key to this. However, this had taken generations to establish, to have effectively mount a challenge was beyond Napoleon’s resources or that of an empire that in maritime timescales, was so fleeting. His inability to do so rendered his ambitions to those of a pipe dream.