The Highwaymen from the Great Sultan Road: the Fight of the Grand Vizier against the Cilicia’s Derebeys during the Campaign against Napoleon Bonaparte of 1799

Османское противостояние вторжению Франции в Египет и Сирию 1798–1801 гг. является одним из наименее изученных сюжетов Наполеоновских войн. Проведенные великим визирем Йусуфом Зия-пашой кампании 1799–1800 и 1801 гг. продемонстрировали как слабость османской армии, так и кризис административно-политического управления империей. Европейские, в том числе и российские наблюдатели могли воочию убедиться, как султанские войска оказались бессильны не только освободить захваченный противником Египет, но и совладать с деребеями – главарями господствовавших в Анатолии разбойничьих шаек. Представленная статья посвящена феномену появления анатолийских деребеев и драматичной борьбе с ними Йусуфа Зия-паши в 1799 г. The Ottoman resisting the invasion of France to Egypt and Syria in 1798–1801 is one of the least studied plots of the Napoleonic wars. The campaigns of 1799–1800 and 1801, conducted by the Grand Vizier Yusuf Zia-pasha demonstrated both the weakness of the Ottoman army and the crisis of administrative and political management of the Empire. European observers, including Russian ones, could convince with their own eyes how the Sultan’s troops were powerless not only to liberate Egypt captured by the enemy, but also to defeat the Derebeys, the leaders of bands of robbers that dominated in Anatolia. The presented article is devoted to the phenomenon of Anatolian Derebeys and to Yusuf Zia-pasha’s fighting against them in 1799.

Dynastic Legitimacy

In this essay Wight clarified the importance of dynastic legitimacy—that is, hereditary monarchy—in European history. In the Middle Ages and subsequent centuries, rulers were mainly princes who inherited their crowns. The principal exceptions were the leaders of republics, including Venice, Ragusa, Genoa, and Lucca in Italy; the Swiss confederation; and the United Provinces of the Low Countries. Dynastic principles included the theory that the ruler was chosen by God through hereditary succession, and that the monarch represented his or her subjects, notably with regard to the official religious denomination of the country. Such principles made dynastic marriages valuable means to provide heirs to the crown, to clarify succession to the throne, to consolidate alliances, to gain influence and wealth, and to legitimize territorial gains. Despite imprudent and egocentric behaviour by some royal leaders, monarchs were increasingly expected to pursue national rather than personal dynastic interests. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna reaffirmed dynastic principles of legitimacy, including in Venice and the Netherlands; the Swiss confederation was a conspicuous exception. Dynastic rulers have, however, tended to become symbols and instruments of national unity and self-determination. Popular support for dynastic houses has in many cases led to popular legitimacy for constitutional monarchies.

Garnisaires in France during the Napoleonic Wars: regulation of repressive measures for maintaining conscription

The Institution of garnisaires was intended for providing lodging to bystanders in the homes of residents in order to comply with the requirements of the government. In France of the early XIX century, it was implemented as a repressive measure to ensure conscription of the recalcitrant. The article describes the legal regulation of the institution of garnisaires in conducting conscription in France of the period of the Consulship and the First Empire. The object of this research is the Institution of garnisaires in the early XIX century; while the changes in legal regulation of this institution throughout the ruling of the First Consul and Emperor Napoleon I. The article employs the normative legal acts of the early XIX century: imperial decrees, governmental acts, executive orders and instructions of the officials of the central and local administration; as well as contextual analysis of legal acts, comparative-historical, and chronological methods. Taking into account that the topic of legal regulation of the institution of garnisaires is poorly covered, the article comprehensively analyzes the content of the fundamental legal acts, determines the peculiarities of stern measures applied for maintaining conscription at different stages of the reign of Napoleon I. The conclusion is made that the legal regulation of the institution of garnisaires during the indicated period has evolved from the first attempts to establish the practice of lodgment as repression, initially not implying specific restrictions, to introduction of more balanced and detailed regulation of the institution with a range of restrictive measures. The formation of legal framework of the institution was completed by 1807–1808 with issuing of the decrees of the Emperor and instructions of the Director General of Military Conscription Jean-Girard Lacuée.

Early Nineteenth-Century ‘Murmurings and Disputings’ in the Ultra-Ganges Missions

As messengers of a peaceful gospel, the ‘Christian soldiers’ put in charge of expanding the remit of the London Missionary Society to South-east Asia and, eventually, to South China frequently found themselves at war with each other. Based on the personal correspondence of missionaries stationed at Melaka, Batavia and Guangzhou, the present article analyses both the challenges faced by the missionary circle as well as the disagreements which developed. The Protestant missionaries sailed in the wake of the Dutch and British navies after the Napoleonic wars. They thus found themselves both protected and held at ransom by the colonial politics which ensued, resulting in personal decisions which could pit individual missionaries against each other. Not a few missionaries were of continental European origin – for example, Thomsen, Brückner and Gützlaff – accentuating rivalries between the colonial enterprises and between competing missionary societies. Differences in personality, such as Robert Morrison’s proverbial severity or the schoolmastery of William Milne, did little to alleviate such tensions. But arguably the most important reason for the ‘murmurings and disputings’ observed by Robert Morrison was radically different outlooks concerning the objectives of the mission. These related to conversion methods, to the educational paradigm of the Christian missions, and methods of outreach, pitting a highly mobile ‘entrepreneurial’ approach against the stability of the mission stations. Importantly in the polyethnic composition of south-eastern Asia, opinions differed on the utility of the Malayan languages, South Chinese vernaculars or the language used by Chinese officials. Dissension within the Ultra-Ganges Missions arose from the essential bifurcation between life in the ‘here & now’ and a future destiny in China.

Conclusion

This book ends in 1750 but its preoccupations can be traced into the early nineteenth century. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars against France between 1793 and 1815 saw two decades of warfare. Fears of popular revolution dominated the 1790s and 1800s, with radical groups being fiercely suppressed. The government’s concern over radical politics and the politics of class extended to the army. It was remarked that military service abroad had led to soldiers becoming vehement democrats; troops were even alleged to have been reading that working-class radical text ...

The United States and the Portuguese Atlantic

Due to treaties between the British and Portuguese empires, Portugal and its Atlantic islands had served as some of the most important trade destinations of British Americans prior to the American Revolution. After US independence, however, Portugal restricted North American access to Portuguese markets. As a result, North Americans anticipated a day when they could trade with independent, republican Brazilians. For their part, however, Brazilians followed a different trajectory toward independence. The Portuguese monarchy liberalized trade in the 1790s to avoid uncomfortable associations of free trade and republican revolution. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Portuguese court relocated from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro to save the empire, opening Brazil to foreign commerce in the process. As a result of such reforms, Brazilians rarely equated republicanism with free trade. After the court returned to Lisbon in 1821 and Brazilians declared independence in 1822, Brazil adopted a monarchy rather than a republic. Brazil disrupted North Americans’ tidy narrative of the Americas as a hemisphere of republics contrasted with European monarchies.