The material below is copyrighted and may not be copied without permission of the authors.  It is taken from:
Thomas J. Kehoe, Harold E. Damerow, and Jose Marie Duvall, Exploring
     Western Civilization:  1600 to the Present:   A Worktext for the Active
     Student, Revised Edition.  (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co.,
      1999.)

            In 1453, the Ottoman Turks succeeded finally in conquering the ancient city of Byzantium or Constantinople, which they renamed Istanbul. The Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire had fallen at last, a thousand years after the Western Roman Empire. Islam had finally triumphed over Orthodox Christianity. Only in Russia did Orthodoxy have the protection of a strong state and Moscow promptly declared itself to be the Third Rome.

            The fall of Byzantium profoundly impacted on the West. It disrupted the trade and wealth of the Italian city-states, triggered the Voyages of Discovery, and led to the economic dominance of countries bordering on the Atlantic ocean. Having breached the walls of Byzantium with their cannons, the Ottomans crossed over into Europe and conquered Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Albania, and Hungary. In 1683, the Ottomans were at the gates of Vienna, which the emperor and his court had fled. Only the heroic rescue mission of the Polish King John Sobieski saved the city. This marked the high point of Ottoman power. The Peace of Carlowitz in 1699 marked the end of the Ottoman Empire’s ability to wage offensive wars in Europe.

            Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Ottoman power declined. Russia and Austria were its perennial enemies, with France and Britain switching alliances as their own national self-interests dictated. Hungary regained its independence from Turkey, only to become a component of the Austrian empire. The Ottoman Empire’s possessions on the Black Sea were nibbled away by the Russian empire.

            Large as the Ottoman Empire had been in Europe, it was far more extensive in the Near East and Northern Africa. The Ottoman Turks had become the successors of the vast Islamic Empire stretching from the Persian Gulf to Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. The degree of control exercised from the center fluctuated over the centuries. Local governors were often in revolt and semi-independent from the Ottoman caliphs. Nonetheless, nominal authority over these regions was maintained, in some cases, until the end of World War I. Throughout the nineteenth century, France and Great Britain, later joined by Italy and Germany, sought to wrest territory away from the Porte, as the Ottoman Empire was called by European diplomats.

            The beginning of this process may be seen in the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon during the French Revolution in 1798. While intended to be a blow against England and seen by Napoleon as a first step toward attacking the British in India, Egypt, in fact, was part of the Ottoman possessions. Napoleon’s invasion brought Turkey into the wars against the French until peace was made in 1802. Thereafter Turkey remained on the sidelines in the wars against Napoleon. Russia was its main enemy, steadily encroaching on its territories in Europe. Misgovernment and internal rebellion within the Ottoman state facilitated this process.

             Russia emerged from its victory over Napoleon in the War of 1812 as the strongest power on the European continent. It encouraged pan-Slavism in the Balkans, an idea that was also compatible with the growing sense of nationalism engendered by the French Revolution. The Greeks fought a revolution beginning in 1821 and had their independence internationally recognized by 1827. Greek independence marked the first successful nationalistic revolution of the nineteenth century. Serbian nationalism was equally strong, but formal independence was not gained until 1878. Albania became independent in 1912.

            Russian expansion in the Balkans was checked by Austrian ambitions. As the Sick Man of Europe, the Ottoman Empire, decayed, these two rival empires picked up the pieces. When they could not annex territories to themselves outright, they encouraged the independence of states like Greece, Serbia, and Albania. Russian ambitions for the Black Sea, Persia, and Afghanistan were opposed by Great Britain. The British were seeking to protect the flanks of their colonial crown jewel, India. The Crimean War (1853-1856) was waged to check Russian ambitions. Ultimately, rivalries in the Balkans triggered the events leading to World War I.

            Egypt remained nominally under Ottoman rule until 1914, but had in fact been under local rule dominated by the Europeans for some time. Ever since Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, that country had been under increasing French and British influence. The Suez Canal was built by a French corporation between 1859 and 1869, but was taken over by the British in 1875. Egypt became a de facto British protectorate in 1882.

            In Northern Africa, the Ottoman Empire lost Algeria to French rule in 1830. Tunisia became a French protectorate in 1881. Libya remained part of the Ottoman Empire until 1911 when it was conquered by Italy. The Ottoman territories in the Middle East—Palestine, Syria, and Iraq—were not taken over by Britain and France until after World War I. The Ottoman Empire came to an end after its defeat in World War I. It was replaced by a Turkish Republic led by Kemal Ataturk.