Imperialism through Islamic Networks 25continued to grow after the Ottomans reasserted control of the region. Having
gained a foothold in Syria, the European powers expanded upon it. Their pres-
ence in Syria and surrounding regions was connected to broader imperial net-
works and interests, as well as domestic interests. Britain had significant trade
networks centered in Baghdad that it wanted to protect, together with its over-
land communication routes to India, which cut through Syria and Mesopota-
mia. France, in the midst of an industrial revolution in the 1840s, relied on
Syria for wool and silk for its new factories. Russia, for its part, had mainly
security concerns, given Syria’s proximity to Russia’s southwestern borders
(the distance between Tiflis and Aleppo is about 600 miles). Each of the
powers—Britain, France, and Russia—feared that if Ottoman power collapsed,
one of its rivals would move in to fill the vacuum, and colonize Ottoman lands.^24
With these broader imperial concerns in mind, European powers increased
their involvement in Ottoman Syria over the 1840s and competed with one
another for influence over local populations. Their interests may have been pri-
marily strategic, but they expressed them largely in religious terms. Standard
scholarly narratives describe a process whereby European “Christian” empires
sought to undermine Ottoman “Muslim” control over its Christian subject pop-
ulations by invoking (and abusing) treaty rights, known as Capitulations, secured
from the Ottomans. Though Syria had a majority Muslim population (about
ninety percent were Sunni Muslims), it was also home to one of the empire’s larg-
est concentrated populations of Christians, who numbered in the hundreds of
thousands and practiced a dizzying array of rites and traditions. On the grounds
of “protecting” Christian “coreligionists” in Syria from persecution by Muslim
neighbors, European consuls interfered in local Christian religious affairs, and
the powers created infrastructures in and around Jerusalem to support their
Christian subjects who visited Jerusalem and nearby holy sites as pilgrims.^25
Russia presumably had a particular advantage in this imperial competition,
since it shared the Eastern Orthodox rite with the largest Christian community
in Syria (Eastern Orthodox were about a third of all Christians in the region).^26
To serve as Russian consul in Beirut, the center of European diplomatic activity
in Syria, the Russian Foreign Ministry carefully chose a Greek-speaking Ortho-
dox Christian: an Ottoman-born Russian subject named Konstantin Bazili.
The ministry hoped that Bazili would gain the trust of the Greek-speaking
clergy in charge of the Orthodox churches in Syria. As Beirut consul, Bazili was
also officially responsible for helping Russian Orthodox pilgrims, who typically
arrived in Beirut or Jaffa by ship, and then proceeded by land to Jerusalem.
However, this was more a justification for opening this new Russian consulate