The Sick Man of Europe: Crisis and Territorial Loss, c1800–1878

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A nationalist revolt in which Greece fought for and won independence from Ottoman rule, secured with Great Power help at Navarino (1827); it was the first permanent territorial loss caused by nationalist revolt.

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The Ottoman governor of Egypt from 1805 who built a modernised army and navy, then twice (1831–33, 1839–41) defeated the sultan's own forces, nearly breaking apart the empire from within.

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A naval battle in which the combined fleets of Britain, France and Russia destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet, decisively helping secure Greek independence.

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The 19th-century debate among European Great Powers over what would happen to Ottoman territory as the empire declined, and who would benefit without triggering a war between the powers.

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Russia used a religious dispute over Palestinian holy sites as a pretext to pressure the Ottomans and occupy Ottoman Danube territory, claiming to protect Orthodox Christians; Britain and France then entered on the Ottoman side to block Russian expansion.

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The Ottomans survived with British and French help; the 1856 Treaty of Paris guaranteed Ottoman territorial integrity and admitted the empire to the Concert of Europe — a dependent, not independent, victory.

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After Russia defeated the Ottomans in 1877–78 and imposed the harsh Treaty of San Stefano, the Great Powers revised the settlement, shrinking the new Bulgaria and confirming full independence for Serbia, Montenegro and Romania.

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Algeria was invaded and colonised directly by France from 1830. Egypt instead gained hereditary autonomous rule under Muhammad Ali's dynasty from 1841, then was militarily occupied by Britain in 1882 after a debt and nationalist crisis.

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Ottoman control over Libya's provinces (Tripolitania and Cyrenaica) was always thin, resting on local elites like the Sanusi order rather than direct rule, leaving it exposed to Italian invasion in the Italo-Turkish War.

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Sectarian massacres between Druze and Maronite Christians killed thousands; France sent troops to protect Christians, leading to a special autonomous status for Mount Lebanon under a Great-Power-approved Christian governor.

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Weak central Ottoman control, combined with European strategic or commercial interest, combined with a local trigger (debt, revolt, or sectarian violence), repeatedly led to loss of Ottoman authority.

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Algeria (1830) → Egypt (1882) → Libya (1911–12) — North Africa was picked off gradually across the whole century, not all at once.