ABSTRACT
For the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century with its still wide swathes of territory stretching from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf and its seemingly endless procession of confessional, ethnic and linguistic groups, the innovation of states based on national identity represented a mortal threat, as indeed, it did to other imperial structures of similarly diverse composition. None of the major empires, the Romanov, the Hapsburg and the Ottoman, would survive the early decades of the twentieth century. What set the Ottoman case apart from the others was the direct involvement of the Western powers in the process of imperial dismemberment. When even its erstwhile allies began to help themselves to portions of Ottoman territory whose integrity they had recently promised to protect—the French seized Tunisia in 1881 and the British helped themselves to Egypt the following year—it was clear that the external environment was turning increasingly hostile to the empire's existence.
