Abstract
This volume is about the monumental struggle between Napoleonic France and Russia at the turn of the nineteenth century.1 While a fight to the death, its duration pales in comparison to Russia’s clash with the Anglo-Saxon world, which spanned large stretches of the past 200 years. Yet unlike the Second World War, except for the Crimea in the mid-1850s, the latter confrontation involved remarkably little direct combat. Whether Eastern Question, Great Game or Cold War, the adversaries were well aware of the terrible cost an armed clash might bring. Rather than meeting on the battlefield, they preferred diplomatic intrigue and military operations against third parties.
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Notes
The best account of this rivalry, albeit from a British perspective, remains Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game (Oxford, 1990). For a recent archivally-based study that sheds some light on Russia’s motives,
see Evgeny Sergeev, The Great Game, 1856–1907: Russo -British Relations in Central and East Asia (Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD, 2013).
Gerald D. Clayton, Britain and the Eastern Question: Missolonghi to Gallipoli (London, 1967), 139.
Karl Meyer and Shareen Bryssac, Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia (New York, 1999), xviii.
George Curzon, Russia in Central Asia in 1889 and the Anglo-Russian Question (London, 1889), 14.
Helen Dewar, ‘Canada or Guadeloupe?: French and British Perceptions of Empire, 1760–1763’, Canadian Historical Review, 91, 4 (2010): 637–60.
Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture and Conquest in the East 1750–1850 (New York, 2005), 131.
J. Christopher Herold, Bonaparte in Egypt (London, 1962), 6.
Juan Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York, 2007), 18.
Philip Dwyer, Napoleon: Path to Power, 1769–1799 (London, 2008), 340–1;
John Holland Rose, The Life of Napoleon I, 2 vols (London, 1935), 1, 78.
Théodore Iung, ed., Lucien Bonaparte et ses Mémoires, 1775–1840, 3 vols (Paris, 1882), 1, 74.
David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind (New Haven, CT, 2010), 44–59.
Muriel Atkin, Russia and Iran, 1780–1828 (Minneapolis, MN, 1980), 32.
Pierre Lehautcourt, La Russie et l’invasion de l’Inde (Paris, 1892); Sir William Thorn and Sir John Macdonald Kinneir, Voyage dans l’Inde britannique (Paris, 1818), 333; William Eton, Tableau historique, politique et modern de l’empire Ottoman, 2 vols (Paris, 1801), 2, passim. The only mention I have found in Catherine II’s correspondence is a message of 18 December 1783 to Prince Potemkin ordering him to deny entry to a certain Monsieur de St Génie, a Frenchman in Constantinople. As she added, ‘I find the presence of such people undesirable’: Sbornik Imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva (hereafter SIRIO), 27 (1880): 290.
Roderick McGrew, ‘Paul I and the Knights of Malta’, in Hugh Ragsdale, ed., Paul I: A Reassessment of His Life and Reign (Pittsburgh, PN, 1979), 44–75;
I. A. Nastenko & Iu. V. Iashnev, Istoriia maltiiskogo ordena, 2 vols (Moscow, 2005), 2, 56–161;
Cyrille Toumanoff, L’Ordre de Malte et l’Empire de Russie (Rome, 1979);
Vladimir A. Zakharov, ‘Mal’tiiskii orden i nekotorye aspekty evropeiskoi politiki Pavla I,’ Sbornik russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, 5, 153 (2002): 271–94.
Roderick McGrew, Paul I of Russia (Oxford, 1992), 282–321;
Paul W. Schroeder, ‘The Collapse of the Second Coalition,’ Journal of Modern History, 59, 2 (1987): 244–90;
Albert Sorel, L’Europe et la revolution française, 8 vols. (Paris, 1885–1904), 6 (1903), 1–118;
Al’bert Z. Manfred, ‘Poiski soiuza s Rossiei, (1800–1801),’ Istoriia SSSR, 4 (1971): 38–59.
According to Edouard Driault, ‘le mystère n’a pas encore été pénétré’: Edouard Driault, Napoléon et l’Europe: La politique extérieure du premier consul, 1800–1803 (Paris, 1910), 149.
Aleksandr A. Batorskii, ‘Proekt ekspeditsii v Indiiu’, Sbornik geograficheskikh, topograficheskikh i statisticheskikh materialov po Azii, 23 (1886): 40.
See also Viktor. M. Bezotosnyi, ‘U istokov neosyshchestvlennogo geopolitich-eskogo proekta veka: “Indiiskii plan” Napoleona Bonaparta’, in Vasilii B. Kashirin, ed., Velichie i iazvy rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow, 2012), 52–75.
The relevant documents are in: RGVIA, f. 26, ‘Voenno-pokhodnaia kantseliariia e.i.v.’, and 846, ‘Voenno-uchennyi arkhiv.’ They have also been republished, beginning with ‘Proekt russko-frantsuskoi ekspeditsii v Indiiu’, Russkaia starina, 7 (1873): 401–10. See also Nikolai K. Shil’der, Imperator Pavel Pervyi (St Petersburg, 1901), 417–9;
Petr M. Shastiko, ed., Russko-Indiiskie otnosheniia v XIX v.: Sbornik arkhivnikh dokumentov i materialov (Moscow, 1997), 27–34, among others.
The classic English-language survey of the broader story is Matthew S. Anderson, The Eastern Question (London, Macmillan), 1966.
Rose, Life of Napoleon, 1, 130–1 (see also 128–37); Dominic Lieven, Russia against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814 (London, 2009), 50–3;
Marie-Pierre Rey, Alexander I: the Tsar who defeated Napoleon (DeKalb, IL, 2012), 185;
Serge S. Tatishcheff, Alexandre 1er et Napoléon d’après leur correspondence inédite, 1801–1812 (Paris, 1891), 303–5; Sorel, L’Europe et la révolution française, 7, 167–87.
Albert Vandal, Napoléon et Alexandre 1er. L’Alliance russe sous le premier empire, 3 vols. (Paris, 1891), 1, 229.
Pace Jennifer Siegel, who argues that the rivalry continued right up to the outbreak of the Great War. See: Jennifer Siegel, Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (London, 2002).
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van der Oye, D.S. (2015). Russia, Napoleon and the Threat to British India. In: Hartley, J.M., Keenan, P., Lieven, D. (eds) Russia and the Napoleonic Wars. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528001_8
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