Commitment to Empire: Prophecies of the Great Game in Asia, 1797-1800

by Edward Ingram

This is the second of Edward Ingram's books about Great Britain as a great power during the industrial revolution, as shown in British interests in the near east between the Seven Years War and the Crimean War. This study of Great Britain's defeat in the war of the Second Coalition explains how the British were affected by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. The ineffectiveness of the Royal Navy; the self promotion of Lord Wellesley and of British officials in India; the search for necessary allies by the British government and for equally necessary enemies by government of India; and the unresolved argument in the British government between supporters of imperial defence and supporters of the European balance of power as Great Britain's most vital interest: all combined to draw the British towards Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and Sind, in a manner prophesying their actions thirty years later at the beginning of the Great Game in Asia. Upon the collapse of the Second Coalition, the British had to make a choice identical to that which they were to face in 1915 when they decided to fight on the Western Front instead of the Dardanelles. In 1797 they chose the opposite answer, and in deciding to fight in Egypt, they committed themselves to the defence of the empire in preference to the re-establishment of the European balance of power. Each time the government was destroyed, because having to choose at all was tantamount to defeat.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

An Anglo-Canadian historian of the British Empire, Edward Roger Ingram Ellis was emeritus professor at Simon Fraser University. Having obtained his BA and MA degrees from Balliol College, Oxford, Ingram went on to receive his PhD in international history from the London School of Economics.