Some Italian Reports on the Red Sea and Its Rivalry with the Ottomans (1899-1902)

By the nineteenth century modernization of the Ottoman state and society under the strong influence of Europe, inevitably produced a new effort to strengthen their administrative and judicial control over the Red Sea area. Following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the European imperialist powers had considered the Red Sea region an increasingly important area of further expansion or containment of the possible hegemony of their rival powers. Therefore, especially between 1870 and 1910, the relations between the remote borders of the Ottoman Empire and the state underwent important changes. According to the Ottoman rulers, a more strict control of Red Sea area would have made the empire safer against the abuses and the attacks of its colonial rivals. Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, together with the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain, Italy and, to a lesser extent, France turned the attention to getting Red Sea within their own sphere of influence. Within this context Ottoman-Italian crisis of 1899-1902 is a neglected historical episode despite its particular disruptive nature. At that time Italy was involved in its Imperialist project in Red Sea area under the responsibility of Ferdinando Martini (1841 – 1928), who was Governor of Eritrea from 1897 to 1907. This paper explores some Italian reports written in Masawwaʿ, Asmara and al-Ḥudayda, housed at the Historical Archive of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, in comparison with some Ottoman sources of the time