Sea of Troubles

Sea of Troubles traces the erosion of Ottoman and North African sovereignty from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the First World War. Ian Rutledge begins with the economic and political structures of the Ottoman Mediterranean, Morocco and the Barbary regencies before following Russian expansion, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, the French conquest of Algeria and the struggles of Mahmud II and Muhammad Ali. Later chapters examine Suez, foreign debt, European financial control and the occupations or attempted partitions of Morocco, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Libya and the Balkans.

Rather than presenting Ottoman decline as an isolated internal failure, the book places it within a competitive system of European imperialism. Britain, France, Russia, Spain, Italy and Austria-Hungary pursued trade routes, strategic ports, territory and political influence, frequently describing conquest as reform, protection or liberation. By connecting colonial warfare, resistance, industrial inequality, finance and diplomacy, Rutledge argues that escalating rivalry in the Islamic Mediterranean formed an important route to the crises of the early twentieth century, the First World War and the final partition of Ottoman lands.