166 • 10 EUROPEAN INTERESTS AND IMPERIALISMpredominated in what is now northern Lebanon. In the seventh century,
the Maronites had taken a compromise position between Orthodox and
Monophysite Christianity, giving them a unique identity. They later en¬
tered into communion with Rome during the Crusades. They were allowed
to keep their traditional practices (such as marriage within the priesthood
and prayers in Syriac). From the seventeenth century, they had access to
Western learning through a papal seminary for Maronites in Rome. When
France emerged as the leading Catholic power, the Maronites welcomed
French missionaries and merchants to Syria, where they built up a network
of schools, churches, factories, and trading posts. France's primacy in Syria
rested on ties with other Christians as well. Some Christians were leaving
their native churches, usually Orthodox but some Jacobite (Monophysite)
and Nestorian, and entering into communion with Rome as Uniates. These
converts to Catholicism, like the Maronites, studied in the French schools
and traded with French merchants. Some adopted other aspects of French
culture, too, and viewed France as their patron and protector. When fight¬
ing erupted in 1860 between Syria's Muslims and Christians, the French
government intervened to rescue the latter.
Strategically speaking, Egypt mattered more to France than Syria did.
This concern was not widely felt in the eighteenth century, when Egypt's
economy and society reached a low point, owing to Ottoman neglect and
Mamluk misrule. But Napoleon Bonaparte, who called Egypt the world's
most important country, occupied it in 1798. For three years Britain and
Turkey engaged in military and diplomatic maneuvers to get the French
troops out of Egypt. Following France's departure, a military adventurer
named Mehmet Ali (the Arabs call him Muhammad Ali) seized power in
Cairo. Using French advisers, he started an ambitious reform program,
built up a strong army and navy, and took Syria from the Ottomans in
- France abetted and applauded Mehmet Ali's gains. Not so the other
Great Powers, who saw these gains as a threat to the European balance of
power and viewed Mehmet Ali as a French agent. It took British naval in¬
tervention to get his troops out of Syria in 1840, but Mehmet Ali retained
power in Egypt and founded a dynasty that would reign there until 1952.
France played the lead role in yet another Egyptian drama. Mehmet Ali's
son, Sa'id, granted a concession in 1854 to a French entrepreneur to build
a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez. The British tried to block the proj¬
ect, fearing that it would put the French in control of a major route to In¬
dia. But once the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, Britain became its main
user. Soon it bought the Egyptian government's shares in the controlling
company; then it sent troops into Egypt (France was supposed to send