George Baldwin

Who was George Baldwin?

George Baldwin was a British merchant, writer and diplomat of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries whose career was principally based in Egypt, where he established valuable trade links for the East India Company and negotiated directly with the Ottoman governors. Despite repeated warnings of the importance of Egypt to links with British India, his advice was ignored and thus when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798 the British were ill-placed to respond directly. In 1801 he assisted the British counter-invasion of Egypt and later returned to Britain with his wife Jane Maltass, a famous society beauty. Although a highly successful merchant and diplomat, Baldwin found himself a subject of ridicule on his return to Britain for his belief in the healing power of magnets, then widely considered a pseudoscience. He retired to Earl's Court in London and died there in 1826.