A further note on the French Newspapers of İstanbul during the revolutionary period (1795-97)

Abstract

In his `Note sur les journaux français de Constantinople â, l'époque révolutionnaire, L. Lagarde threw important light on a hitherto obscure aspect of the propaganda effort of the Directory within the Ottoman Empire. The purpose of this additional note is to amplify and, in certain respects to correct, Lagarde's earlier contribution on the basis of the reports, now in the Public Record Office in London, of the British Minister to the Ottoman Porte, J. Spencer Smith. For inevitably, during the crucial years immediately before Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition of the summer of 1798 and the consequent Ottoman declaration of war on France, Spencer Smith kept a close watch on the activities of his French rival in İstanbul and the Levant. Succeeding Sir Robert Liston in 1795, Spencer Smith showed himself markedly fearful of what he termed 'the destructive doctrines so progressive in the present day' and the threat posed by French propaganda activities in the Levant.