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There were to be three, some would argue four, wars within Europe before the outbreak of general war in July–August 1914, and certainly the first of these, the war between Italy and the Ottoman Empire, was one that has a much-neglected naval dimension. This war has certain aspects that commend it as relevant to the present time, not least in that it was a war begun by a power that saw itself entitled to territory and standing and in defense of certain specific interests, not least the protection of its citizens and commerce at the expense of peoples of different culture, the coastal Moors and Turks and the Arabs of the interior, and it was a war in which the campaign was over very quickly. When the fighting ended the Italian high command was left to ponder the wisdom of the Clausewitzian dictum that it is easy to conquer but hard to occupy. The Italians were able to secure the major coastal towns of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica in a little more than three weeks, but thereafter two very separate problems came to center stage, namely the bringing of Turkey to terms and making it surrender these provinces and in dealing with local peoples who simply refused to accept Italian conquest. The resistance to Italian conquest and rule continued past September 1931 and was only broken by a ruthless campaign of resettlement and frontier defenses, with all the connotations that the words “concentration camps” entail. * * * chapter eight prelude to the first world war 166 from port arthur to bucharest From a naval perspective the Italian-Turkish war is not one that has commanded much in the way of historical attention and it is a conflict with elements long forgotten, if, indeed, they were ever known in the first place. The most obvious is that while the focus of the war was the provinces that ultimately together came together to form Libya, there were in fact two theaters. The major theater, the eastern and central Mediterranean, saw operations under four separate headings. The “other” theater was the Red Sea, which became a theater of war on account of the Italian possession of Colonia Eritrea1 and Turkish possession of the greater part of the Arabian peninsula, specifically what was to become Saudi Arabia and the Yemen. Given the absence of real opposition, since there was only the modern destroyer Peik I-Schewket at Hodeida, the Italians were well placed to effect blockade and to conduct a series of bombardments of various coastal installations and towns in this second theater of operations. The Italian bombardment of Akaba on 19 November was followed by a very temporary respite for the Turkish forces in the form of a ceasefire observed at the time of the passage of the British king and queen, who were returning from their coronation ceremonies in India. On 30 November business was resumed with the cruiser Calabria (returning from duty in the Far East) and gunboat Volturno carrying out bombardments of Mocca and Sheik Said,2 the immediate Italian target being sailing ships and dhows that had been gathered at these ports.3 At this time the Italians were aware of reports of Turkish concentration of troops in readiness for a move into Eritrea, and in January 1912, at a time when operations in the Mediterranean had largely closed down with most their warships returned to base and many undergoing quick maintenance and refitting, the Italians sent the cruisers Calabria , Piemonte, and Puglia, the gunboats Aretusa and Volturno, the survey ship Staffeta, plus the destroyers Artigliere, Bersagliere, Garabaldino, and the Granatiere into the Red Sea. On 7 January an Italian formation was involved in an attack on seven Turkish gunboats that were at Kunfudah.4 These had been ordered to return to the Mediterranean from their station in the Persian Gulf, but lack of coal precluded their being able to reach the Suez Canal. The Italian warships were able to sink four of these boats in a three-hour action, the remaining units being driven ashore and destroyed by Italian boarding parties the next morning.5 Thereafter this theater was witness to the extension of the Italian blockade to Camaran Island (hitherto exempt as a quarantine station for pilgrims),6 the periodic Italian bombardment of selected ports,7 and the Italian sponsoring of an Arab seizure of Farsan Islands8 in February and of Midy on the mainland in March in moves designed to put the Turks in southern Arabia on...

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