This book describes how the island of Malta became a protectorate of the British Crown during the wars against Napoleon after the failures of the Knights of Saint John, republican France, the Two Sicilies, and finally imperial Russia to fill the role of its best defender. Author Desmond Gregory also explains why most, though not all, Maltese people welcomed the protection of Britain, the supreme naval power in the Mediterranean after the battle of Aboukir Bay.

Over the course of four centuries, the island of Malta underwent several significant political transformations, including its roles as a Catholic bastion under the Knights of St. John between 1530 and 1798, and as a British maritime hub in the nineteenth century. This innovative study draws on both archival evidence and archeological findings to compare slavery and coerced labor, resource control, globalization, and other historical phenomena in Malta under the two regimes: one feudal, the other colonial. Spanning conventional divides between the early and late modern eras, Russell Palmer offers here a rich analysis of a Mediterranean island against a background of immense European and global change.

In British shipping in the Mediterranean Katerina Galani investigates the impact of the French and Napoleonic wars on British maritime economic activity. Due to the close cooperation of the public and private sector at sea, the British adopted flexible business strategies to mitigate economic warfare and sustain shipping and trade in the Mediterranean. The book offers a comprehensive approach by combining the study of international relations, ports, ships, business organisation, deep-sea voyages and intra-Mediterranean navigation. Katerina Galani conceptualises the Mediterranean as an economic entity and she insightfully examines, for the first time, free traders along with the chartered Levant Company. Her analysis draws upon a unique collection of British and Mediterranean sources to construct a multifaceted view of British maritime activity.

A strategic outpost in the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus was vital to British imperial ambitions in the East as the Ottoman Empire grew increasingly fragile in the nineteenth century. Here, Gail Dallas Hook describes the British occupation of Cyprus from 1878 to 1914, during which British government, science, and capital investment were installed alongside a new British colonial community, building 'British Cyprus' long before the island became a formal part of the British Empire. Protectorate Cyprus further demonstrates how the British attempted to bring 'good government' to Cyprus yet failed to resolve the issues of Muslim and Greek Orthodox divisions. It is a unique representation of Britain's 'informal empire' before World War I that has been little studied. Protectorate Cyprus is a crucial addition to the history of the British Empire.

Written by an experienced author and expert in the field, Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, 1792-1815 provides a thorough re-examination of the crucial period in the history of France for students of history and military studies. Based on extensive research, and including twenty detailed maps, this study is unique in its focus on the wars of both the French Revolution and Napoleon. Owen Connelly expertly analyzes them both to provide a broader context for warfare. Examining the causes of the wars, and how the practices of warfare during this period were to influence mode of combat throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Connelly also establishes trends discernable in the First and Second World Wars and examines key issues including: * the impact of the population explosion on armies and war * the legacy of the ancient regime impact on revolutionary armies * the impact of the Revolution on leadership, strategy, organization and weaponry * Was Napoleon’s leadership style unique, or could another have played his role? * contributions from the governments of the early Revolution, the Terror, the Directory and the Napoleonic regime * What did twenty-three successive years of war accomplish? * Was this era a turning point in the history of warfare?

The first biography of Charles Cornwallis in forty years—the soldier, governor, and statesman whose career covered America, India, Britain, and Ireland Charles, First Marquis of Cornwallis (1738–1805), was a leading figure in late eighteenth-century Britain. His career spanned the American War of Independence, Irish Union, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the building of the Second British Empire in India—and he has long been associated with the unacceptable face of Britain’s colonial past. In this vivid new biography, Richard Middleton shows that this portrait is far from accurate. Cornwallis emerges as a reformer who had deep empathy for those under his authority, and was clear about his obligation to govern justly. He sought to protect the population of Bengal with a constitution of written laws, insisted on Catholic emancipation in Ireland, and recognized the limitations of British power after the American war. Middleton reveals how Cornwallis’ rewarding of merit, search for economy, and elimination of corruption helped improve the machinery of British government into the nineteenth century.