France is no stranger to engagement with, and intervention in, the Middle East. Reaching back over a millennium, perceptions of France as a Middle East power are entrenched. More recently, from the colonial rivalries and imperial acquisitions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through two world wars, the catastrophe of the Suez affair and the difficulties of decolonisation in the twentieth century, French experience in the region has been as long as it has at times been painful.

France's modern engagement in the region dates back at least as far as the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. The failure of Napoleon's expedition (French forces remained in Egypt for only three years) did little to dampen French interest. Later, effectively constrained in Europe by balance of power considerations and the Concert of Europe, other outlets for European great power rivalries were required, specifically for those between France and Great Britain. This foreshadowed the conquest of Algeria from 1830, establishing a colonial presence which became integral to conceptions of France and French national identity until Algeria's eventual independence in 1962 after brutal years of warfare. French colonial gains further continued in the nineteenth century with the establishment of a protectorate over Tunisia in the 1880s, and over Morocco in 1912 (French interests in Egypt had largely been surrendered to the British in the 1880s, confirmed by the Fashoda crisis of 1898 and codified in the Entente Cordiale of 1904). During the First World War the Sykes-Picot agreement aimed to divide the region between Britain and France, while in the post-war period French interests were completed with the acquisition of League of Nations mandatory power over Lebanon and Syria. After a period beset by tension and conflict, both gained formal independence in 1943, although French troops only left in 1946. Driven over time by concerns over the European balance of power in the context of the decline of the Ottoman Empire; by Franco-British rivalry and later by the emergence of Germany; by domestic considerations; and by wider desires for cultural expansion, French interests in the region were deep-rooted and multi-faceted.