British Military Orientalism: Cross-cultural Contact with the Mamluks during the Egyptian Campaign, 1801

Abstract

This article explores how a distinctive ‘military’ orientalism developed in response to the exposure of British soldiers to an unprecedented level of cross-cultural contact with the Mamluks, a military caste of warriors, during the campaign in Egypt in 1801. It offers a contribution towards the current understanding of ‘military’ orientalism, a term coined by Patrick Porter to describe how ‘Western’ militaries have viewed ‘Eastern’ modes of warfare. While Porter’s analysis concentrates on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this article returns the focus to what Edward Said identified as the foundational moment in European orientalism: the French occupation of Egypt, 1798–1801.