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.

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.

At some point between 1776 and 1778 he was reported to have climbed the Great Pyramid at Giza and drunk a mixture of waters from the Nile, Ganges and Thames, symbolically linking the trade routes he managed.

[1] An attempt to set up in India ended in failure when Baldwin was assaulted and robbed en route, and he and his wife returned to Britain, pausing in Vienna.

Frustrated, Baldwin left Cairo and thus was not present during the Mediterranean campaign of 1798, when a British force under Sir Horatio Nelson was unable to gain audience with the Egyptian government to warn of the impending attack, as they had no ambassador.

After the Battle of Marengo, he moved to Naples and from there assisted with the planning of the British counter-invasion of Egypt and travelled with the army as a logistical officer, witnessing the successful campaign and securing local sources of supplies from his contacts in the country.

Shortly after one of his caravans in the Ottoman was attached in 1779 and he escaped to Smyrna, he married Jane Maltass (1763–1839), the daughter of his agent and a famous society beauty.

[1] While pausing in Vienna on their way to Britain, Jane was celebrated in society: a bust of her was made for Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor by the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi and Count Wenzel Anton Kaunitz-Rietberg commissioned a full-length portrait.