Ian Rutledge is an economist and historian. He earned his PhD in Economic History from the University of Cambridge and has taught at the Universities of London and Sheffield, and for the Workers' Educational Association. An Arabist who has studied the language for over two decades, Rutledge has devoted the past two decades to researching the economic and political history of the Middle East and North Africa. His other publications include the critically acclaimed Enemy on the Euphrates: The Battle for Iraq, 1914-1921.

A lively, sweeping account of how a once great Islamic civilisation was defeated by European powers.

EpigraphPrefacePART ONE c.1750 - 1830Chapter 1: Islam, Christian Europe and the Mediterranean:Social Structures, Incomes, Living Standards and the Role of ReligionChapter 2: Islam, Christian Europe and the Mediterranean: the Ottoman 'Economic Mind', Industry and TradeChapter 3: At the Gateway to the Mediterranean: Britain and the 'Empire' of MoroccoChapter 4: State, land and taxation: the fiscal crisis of the Ottoman systemChapter 5: The Ottoman Regencies and the Barbary CorsairsChapter 6: The Russians in the MediterraneanChapter 7: Ottoman Egypt: the Empire Fraying at the EdgesChapter 8: A Spanish DisasterChapter 9: 'Liberating the Egyptians': the Origins of French Republican ImperialismChapter 10: The French in Egypt: from Military Victory to Colonial failureChapter 11: The Troubled beginnings of Britain's 'Blue-Water Empire'Chapter 12: The Beginning of the end for the Ottoman RegenciesPART TWO 1830 - c1870Chapter 13: The Multiple Crises of Mahmud IIChapter 14: The French Invasion of the Regency of Algiers and the growth of the Resistance 1830-36.Chapter 15: Saving the SultansChapter 16: Algérie Francaise, Morocco, Britain and the defeat of the ResistanceChapter 17: Syria, Suez and the France's Second Imperial Venture in the Eastern MediterraneanChapter 18: The Industrialised and the Non-IndustrialisedPART THREE c.1870 - c.1900Chapter 19: The Age of the RentiersChapter 20: The Bailiffs arriveChapter 21: The slow death of the 'Empire' of MoroccoPART FOUR c.1900 - 1918Chapter 22: Imperialist Realignment and the French Intervention in MoroccoChapter 23: Imperialism on the Northern Shore: Austria-Hungary and Bosnia-HerzegovinaChapter 24: From Mediterranean Imperialism to World War: Morocco, Libya and the Southern BalkansPostscriptNotesBibliographyIndex

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, this great civilisation - 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 definitive account of the European conquest of the Levant and North Africa in the last three centuries.