The Geopolitics of the first British expedition to Egypt – III: the Red Sea campaign, 1800–1

Abstract

The argument about war aims and strategy in the war of the Second Coalition between supporters of imperial expansion and supporters of a Continental commitment, which caused the cabinet crisis of September 1800 and led to the collapse of William Pitt the Younger's administration, was echoed in the British government of India. The behaviour of the British army sailing around the Mediterranean was copied by a second British army hovering on the shores of the Indian Ocean. One ended up at Alexandria, the other at Kosseir in the Red Sea. The history of the latter illustrates the limits to the strategic mobility of sea power and the way in which an army can govern the movements of a fleet. It also shows how far the governor-general of Bengal, the Marquis Wellesley, would go to prevent his dream of British paramountcy in India being disturbed by the need to protect trade in the eastern seas. Trade, for Wellesley, should follow the flag across India. All the troops he could muster should be ready to take advantage of the opportunities for empire-building in India given to the British by their destruction of Tipu Sultan of Mysore in May 1799. The death of Tipu Sultan and the partition of Mysore left Wellesley and his associates to explain how a great victory could leave one in greater danger than before. C.A. Bayly suggests that the partition of Mysore did leave British India in greater danger: as Wellesley's critics argued correctly, his subsidiary alliance system caused political instability.1 The East India Company's allies had to raise taxes to pay for the units of the Indian army they were expected to hire, partly because the rate of return was low whenever the taxes were farmed: the other Indian states tried to head off the British by copying them. They revamped their tax structures to pay for larger standing armies and switched from cavalry to infantry and artillery. Such developments naturally delighted Wellesley rather than alarmed him. He seized happily on all evidence of political instability and social unrest to support his claim that India would never be stable and its population contented and prosperous until the British became the paramount power. His great victories would always point the way to further effort.