From 12:00am ending at 11:59pm 11 days later, on Thursday 31 March
Times shown are in GMT (UTC +0) up to the 26th March. For events on or after 27th March times are in BST (UTC +1).
A talk by Jonathan Parry, Professor of Modern British History, covering Britain’s early engagement with the Middle East, mainly during the first half of the 19th century.
This talk considers Britain's early engagement with the Middle East, mainly in the first half of the nineteenth century. It explores how Britain sought to defend the region from European rivals, after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, and again once the Russian threat to India emerged in the 1820s.
Its main themes will be: the two strategic routes that were identified through the region, through Egypt and the Red Sea, and through Mesopotamia and the Gulf; how the British gave little thought to the Ottomans who nominally ruled these lands, but rather more to the Arabs who lived there; and how geographical, archaeological and technological discoveries (such as steam power) were important in the process of engagement with the area. Most British thinking was shaped by its (biblical and classical) past, but as the century there was also more speculation about its potential economic future.
The talk is linked to a book published on this topic in March 2022.
Video will be available here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6TzmDK1G1bsCtdyTUxwZCA
