The decline of the Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire ottoman-empire The Islamic empire centred on Istanbul that ruled Anatolia, the Arab Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe from the fourteenth century to its dissolution after the First World War. Its collapse created the modern states of the Middle East, Turkey, and the Balkans in ways that continue to shape regional politics. At its peak in the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire encompassed an enormous territory from Hungary to Yemen, from Algeria to the borders of Persia. It was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state governed through the millet system, which granted non-Muslim communities (Christians, Jews) significant autonomy in their internal affairs in exchange for taxes and political loyalty. The nineteenth century brought simultaneous challenges: nationalist movements among the Balkan populations — Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians — used the language of national self-determination to carve independent states from Ottoman territory, with Russian and Western support; the empire lost more than a third of its European territory in the 1877–78 war with Russia. Attempts at modernisation and reform — the Tanzimat reforms, the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 — failed to arrest the decline and produced new tensions between Turkish nationalist modernisers and the empire’s Arab, Armenian, and Kurdish populations. The First World War was catastrophic: the empire entered on the German side, suffered the Armenian Genocide (1915–23), lost the Arab provinces to British-led forces, and was dissolved by the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) — replaced by the Turkish Republic under Ataturk, whose territorial integrity was established by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). The Ottoman Empire’s collapse created the modern Middle East in ways that are still unfolding. The borders drawn by the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the subsequent mandates reflected French and British strategic priorities rather than the population distributions, administrative traditions, or political aspirations of the peoples concerned. The result was a set of states whose internal social compositions were incompatible with the nation-state model imposed on them: Iraq with its Sunni-Shia-Kurdish divisions, Lebanon with its confessional arithmetic, Syria with its minority-dominated military, Israel-Palestine with its overlapping claims. These incompatibilities were not caused by the Ottoman Empire — which governed diverse populations through systems of autonomous administration — but by the particular form of its destruction and replacement. The ongoing instability of the region reflects, in significant part, the unresolved consequences of those decisions made in London and Paris between 1916 and 1920. was not a single event but a slow, agonizing process of attrition. Throughout the 19th century, the “Sick Man of Europe” lost territory piece by piece—Algeria to France, Egypt to Britain. But the final act began in 1911, not in the Balkans or the Caucasus, but on the sands of North Africa.

In this week’s podcast, I explored the Italian invasion of Libya, a conflict that is often overlooked but was pivotal in setting the stage for the First World War.

The Latecomer to Empire

Italy, unified only in 1871, was desperate to join the club of European imperial powers. Blocked from expansion in Europe and beaten to the punch in much of Africa, Rome turned its eyes to the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (modern-day Libya).

As I discussed in the episode, the invasion was an act of naked aggression by a supposedly liberal state. It mirrored the “mountebank nationalism” that would later characterize Mussolini’s fascism—a desire to channel domestic energy into foreign conquest.

The Young Turk Resistance

The Ottoman government, weak and overstretched, wanted to write off Libya to avoid a costly war. But the “Young Turks”—the nationalist officers who had seized power in 1908—refused to accept another humiliation.

Among them was Major Enver (later Enver Pasha), who travelled incognito to Libya to organize a guerrilla resistance. Enver, a secular modernizer, found himself in a strange position: leading Bedouin tribesmen and the deeply religious Senussi Brotherhood in a jihadJihad jihad The Arabic term meaning ‘struggle’ or ‘effort’, used in Islamic theology to refer to both the internal spiritual struggle against sin and the external military struggle in defence of the faith. In contemporary political usage it is most often associated with the latter meaning, specifically armed struggle against non-Muslim rule or influence. In classical Islamic jurisprudence, jihad encompasses a range of meanings from the internal striving to be a better Muslim (often called the ‘greater jihad’) to the collective obligation of armed defence of the Muslim community (the ‘lesser jihad’). The political history of the term’s modern transformation is inseparable from the anti-colonial struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in which Islamic scholars and political leaders used jihad to mobilise resistance against European occupation of Muslim-majority lands. The contemporary association of jihad primarily with violent struggle is partly the result of the deliberate promotion of a particular interpretation by Salafi-jihadist organisations from the 1970s onward, and partly the result of Western media usage that narrowed the term’s meaning. In the works of ideologues like Sayyid Qutb and Abdullah Azzam, jihad was reframed as an individual obligation (fard ‘ayn) — applying to every Muslim — rather than a collective one directed by legitimate authorities, removing the institutional checks that classical jurisprudence had placed on its invocation. This reframing, combined with the Soviet-Afghan War experience and then the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, produced the jihadist movement as it is understood today. The analytical challenge with jihad in contemporary discourse is distinguishing between description and definition: using the term to describe a wide range of violent and non-violent Islamic political movements risks conflating organisations with radically different goals, methods, and social bases, while restricting it to violent extremism ignores the legitimate theological and political traditions the term encompasses. The term’s politicisation — by jihadist organisations that use it to claim universal Islamic sanction for their violence, and by Western politicians and media who use it to associate all Islamic political activism with terrorism — has made genuine analysis more difficult. For students of history, the more productive question is always specific: which organisation, in what context, pursuing what political goals through what means, funded and supported by whom? The word ‘jihad’ is a starting point for inquiry, not a conclusion. against a Christian invader.

This experience transformed Enver. He adopted Arab dress, lived in the desert, and witnessed the power of Islam as a mobilizing force. As Eugene Rogan notes in The Fall of the Ottomans, Enver realized that “there is no nationality in Islamism.” This insight would shape Ottoman strategy during the First World War, where the call to jihad was used to try and incite rebellion among the Muslim subjects of the British and French empires.

The Domino Effect

Despite the success of Enver’s guerrilla tactics, which pinned the Italians to the coast, the war was lost elsewhere. Italy expanded the conflict to the Aegean, bombarding Beirut and occupying Rhodes. Finally, they played the “Balkan Card,” encouraging Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece to attack the Ottomans in Europe.

Faced with a war on two fronts, the Ottomans had no choice but to surrender Libya to Italy in October 1912. The officers in the desert, including the future Kemal Atatürk, rushed back to Istanbul to fight for the survival of the empire in the Balkans.

The loss of Libya was the first domino. It exposed the Ottomans’ weakness, emboldened the Balkan states, and accelerated the series of crises that would explode in Sarajevo in 1914.

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Transcript
Nick: Hi there and welcome again to the Explaining History podcast.

Today I’m going to look again at the decline of the Ottoman Empire, focusing on an angle that is sometimes overlooked: the loss of Ottoman North Africa.

We’re diving back into Eugene Rogan’s The Fall of the Ottomans. Last time we looked at Anatolia and the Armenian massacres. Today, we turn to the Mediterranean.

Rogan writes that while the Ottomans struggled in Anatolia, they faced a fresh crisis in North Africa. The provinces of Benghazi and Tripoli (modern Libya) were the last Ottoman possessions on the continent, following the loss of Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt to France and Britain.

Italy, a new state unified in 1871, aspired to an empire. Blocked in Europe, the government of King Victor Emmanuel III turned to Libya.

It is interesting to note how illiberal these “liberal” governments were. The seizure of Libya was extremely violent, an act of “mountebank nationalism” designed to channel the energies of the Risorgimento into expansion.

In September 1911, seizing on the pretext of an Ottoman arms shipment, Rome declared war. The Ottoman position was untenable—4,200 soldiers with no naval support against an Italian invasion force of 34,000. The coastal towns fell quickly.

The Ottoman government wanted to write off the territory to avoid a wider war. However, the ultra-nationalist Young Turks, particularly the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), refused to accept this.

Major Enver (later Enver Pasha) persuaded the CUP to launch a guerrilla war. He travelled incognito to Libya via Egypt, followed by dozens of other officers, including Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk). They called themselves Fedayeen—fighters willing to sacrifice their lives.

Enver threw himself into the conflict with passion. He donned Arab robes, rode camels, and recruited Bedouin tribesmen and the powerful Senussi Brotherhood. Despite being a secular modernizer who spoke no Arabic, he bonded with the tribes through the shared identity of Islam.

This experience shaped Enver’s worldview. He wrote: “There is no nationality in Islamism… Just take a look at what is going on around the Islamic world.” He realized that religion could be a potent tool against European imperialism—a lesson he would apply during World War I.

The guerrilla war was remarkably successful. For a year, Italian troops were pinned to the coast, unable to penetrate the interior. But Italy knew the war had to end with a treaty. To pressure Istanbul, they expanded the conflict, bombarding Beirut and occupying the Dodecanese islands (including Rhodes). They even sent torpedo boats to the Dardanelles, alarming the Russian Tsar.

Finally, Italy played the “Balkan Card.” They encouraged Montenegro to declare war on the Ottomans in October 1912, knowing other Balkan states would follow. Faced with a war in its European heartland, the Ottoman government capitulated, ceding Libya to Italy.

The Young Turk officers, ashamed to abandon their Libyan comrades, rushed back to Istanbul to fight the First Balkan War.

This conflict illustrates the cynical nature of European imperialism and how the weakness of the Ottoman state invited aggression that would eventually lead to the catastrophe of 1914.

I’ll leave it there. Join us on Sunday, January 25th for our Russian Revolution Masterclass. It starts at 3pm UK time. If you’re an A-level student (or equivalent), don’t miss it!

Take care everyone. All the best. Bye-bye.