In the second half of the eighteenth century, approximately three
quarters of the Mediterranean coastline and its hinterlands were
controlled by a vast Islamic power, the centuries-old Ottoman Empire.
However, by the end of the First World War in November 1918, this
great civilization-once regarded by Christian Europe with awe and
fear-had been completely subjugated, its territories occupied by
European powers.
The
history of imperialism in the Mediterranean involves not one but six
European powers-Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Austria-Hungary, and
Russia- jostling for control of the trade, lands, and wealth of those
they saw as the existential "other." The competition
between these states made their conquest of the Islamic Mediterranean
a far more difficult and extended task than they encountered
elsewhere in the world. Yet, as new contenders entered the contest,
and as the rivalries in the Mediterranean intensified in the early
twentieth century, events would spiral out of control as the
continent headed towards the First World War.
Set
against a background of intense imperial rivalry, Sea of Troubles
is the first definitive account of the European conquest of the
Levant and North Africa in the last three centuries.