The ‘Near East’ is a term sometimes used to denote only the Islamic lands between the Mediterranean and the variously defined countries of the ‘Middle East’. In this chapter it is used to cover all the coastlands of the eastern Mediterranean—roughly, what was known, a century and a half ago, as the Levant; and any survey of changes in European relations with these lands must include some reference to other parts of the Ottoman Empire and its immediate neighbours in Asia. The fortunes of this decaying but still tough-cored Empire were so closely linked in every part that it is difficult to separate the affairs of Egypt sharply from those of Greece, the Balkans and the lower Danube, or from those of Turkey in Asia. Penetrating all these regions were the commercial and strategical activities of the European powers—of the French and English mainly through maritime interests in the Mediterranean, of the Austrians and Russians chiefly on the landward fringes of Turkey, but with many overlapping contacts and rivalries in each direction. Finally, arising out of this penetration (perhaps even inspiring some of it) and in turn accelerating it, was the influence, both dissolving and reviving, of the technique, habits and ideas of contemporary Europeans upon the older ways of life throughout the Near East.

In this gradual process, the differences between the nations of Europe were much less important, in relation to Islam, than were their similarities. In spite of their rivalries or open enmities, the embassies at Constantinople had more in common with each other than with the intricate maze of officials at the Porte; the western consuls and merchants, there and at Smyrna, were still all ‘Franks’ in the eyes of Turkish pashas and even of Greek and Armenian traders; to the Mameluke beys of Egypt around 1800, the French and British armies were simply alternative brands of the same totally foreign medicine.