ABSTRACT
The efforts of Italian statesmen to find a place for Italy in Africa were met by a drastic increase of the hold of Great Britain and France upon the Mediterranean. The greatest blow to Italy's colonial ambitions was the signature of the treaty of Bardo, by which the bey of Tunisia accepted the protectorate of France. Indignation and disappointment drove Italy into the arms of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Shortly after the French occupied Tunisia, Italy became a member of the Triple Alliance, to which Italy remained faithful until after the outbreak of the World War. The extension of French political control over Tunisia has rankled in the minds of the Italians, and the resentment is still keen forty years after the event. A policy of "pacific penetration" was begun by the Italians in Tripoli, which might have been successful in detaching the last African province from the Ottoman Empire but for the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.
