FRANCE claimed to have long had a special interest and place in the Levant, above that of any other European power. Under the influence of national pride in the nineteenth century this interest was said to have dated back to the Crusades, seen in France as a largely French national enterprise, not altogether unjustly. What is more certain is that there was an intermittent alliance with the Ottoman Empire, most notoriously in the sixteenth century, and in extensive trade relations, particularly in the eighteenth century. Napoleon came into this, of course, even though he was defeated and driven out – but even his failed enterprise gave France, at least in French eyes, a claim to interest and influence. A more stable interest developed in the later nineteenth century, based on the recognition of the existence of a substantial Christian community spread throughout Syria, but concentrated especially in the area of Mount Lebanon. Napoleon III had claimed a special status as protector of Catholic Christians and of the holy places in Palestine, a claim which contributed to the outbreak of the Crimean War.

France claimed not only the position of protector of Catholics in the Ottoman Empire, but particularly of the Maronite Christians of Lebanon, who were in communion with the Papacy. It was in fact largely the administrative weakness of the empire which permitted the French to exercise influence in Syria. Ottoman authority had faded in the eighteenth century with the rise of local strongmen, such as the lords of Lebanon and the Governor of Acre.