72 A Short History of the Middle East
anxious that it and the English company should continue to ob-
serve a strict neutrality. Hostilities however broke out between
them in 1745, and there followed sixteen years of fierce Anglo-
French struggle with each company using Indian rulers as allies.
By 1761 the French hopes of empire had been shattered and the
English East India Co. was on the way to becoming the supreme
authority over large parts of India.
The next country to become the scene of these Anglo-French
rivalries was Egypt, On the initiative of Ali Bey, for a few years
the independent ruler of Egypt, and of Warren Hastings, the
vigorous and unconventional governor of Bengal, the East India
Co. sent more than one expedition in the I770?s from India to
Suez,1 whence the freight was transported under Egyptian
guarantee to the Mediterranean for shipment to England. By
opening up this route, which foreshadowed the speeding-up of
communications in the following century, Calcutta was brought
within two months of London, as compared with five months by
the Cape Route. Although a variety of jealous influences inter-
rupted this traffic after a few years, it had been enough to alarm the
French for the future of their virtual monopoly of the Egyptian
trade; and English and French interests competed for the favour of
the Mamluk rulers of Egypt, with control of the Red Sea-Mediter-
ranean route as the prize, until the attention of both countries was
diverted by the French Revolution and the European war which
grew out of it.
By 1797 Napoleon, commanding the French armies at the age of
twenty-eight, had knocked Austria out of the coalition of counter-
revolutionary Powers, leaving France free to turn on her next
most formidable enemy, Britain. Since a direct invasion across the
Channel was considered too difficult, the French government de-
cided on an expedition to conquer Egypt. This project, which had
been mooted by French political thinkers at various times since the
beginning of the century, had been considered impolitic as long as
Egypt was an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, with which
France had continually been on good terms in opposition to their
common enemy Austria. But now that the Ottoman authority
over Egypt had ceased to be more than nominal and that Britain
had shown signs of establishing commercial interests there, the
1 The Ottoman government, jealous for its customs-revenues, did not allow
European trading-ships to sail north of Jidda.