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