The Ottoman Empire was the victim of European imperialism in the late Nineteenth Century, but it was also itself an imperialist and expansionist state. This revisionist idea is at the heart of Mostafa Minawi's The Ottoman Scramble for Africa, which makes a substantial contribution to a burgeoning body of work on late Ottoman frontier history. After the Conference of Berlin (Congo Conference) in 1884–1885, the Ottoman state sought to alleviate earlier territorial losses from the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–1878 by taking a role in the “scramble for Africa” with the other European imperialist powers, thereby demonstrating that the Ottomans were part of the European system of so-called civilized states. The Ottomans sought an area of control in the Lake Chad Basin and the Sahara Desert, south of Ottoman possessions in coastal Libya, while accepting European rules on how to make territorial claims.

Minawi discusses in the first two-thirds of the book the historical development of Ottoman imperialism in Africa. He traces the background of Ottoman control in Libya, Ottoman links to the Sahara and Central African kingdoms, and especially the friendly Ottoman relations with the Sanusi Sufi organization that was widespread in the Libyan interior and beyond. It was through the Sanusis that the Ottomans expanded their influence. As Britain, France, and the Mahdist Sudan expanded into the eastern and central Sahara, the Ottomans also sought much of the same territory by sending weapons to the Sanusis. After 1894, however, the Ottoman government recognized its inability to directly challenge Britain and France in the Lake Chad region, opting instead to act together with the Sanusis to consolidate their influence and then indirectly resist the encroachments of France and Britain.

In addition to attempted expansion in Africa, Ottoman leaders perceived a threat in growing British, French, and Italian involvement in the Red Sea region, including the religiously-important Ottoman province of the Hijaz in western Arabia. In the last one-third of the book Minawi discusses Ottoman projects to link together the central core of the state with the southern borders of the empire in the Hijaz. In the late 1890s the Ottomans planned a land-based telegraph line extending south from Damascus. An underwater telegraph cable had earlier connected Jidda, the port of Mecca, to Suakin in Africa and onward to Cairo and Istanbul, but after the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 Sultan ʿAbdulhamid II wanted an all-Ottoman telegraph line. Various Ottoman officials vigorously debated the advisability of constructing such an expensive telegraph line, which might be subject to attacks by Bedouins, but the sultan and his close advisers ultimately opted for this undertaking. Construction of the telegraph line to Madina was rapid. However, the Hashimite amir of Mecca feared the project's centralizing effects and the telegraph, as with the case of the later Hijaz Railway, never reached beyond Madina. Unlike the situation in southern Libya where the Sanusi leaders cooperated with the Ottomans, in the Hijaz local leaders and some Ottoman officials secretly defied the centralization plans of Istanbul.

While Ottoman projects in the Lake Chad area and in the Hijaz were at best only partially successful and perhaps failures, Minawi argues that even failed endeavors can be used to illustrate the motivations of the Ottoman state and its diplomatic initiatives and technological sophistication. Similarly, he advocates the usefulness of examining the Ottoman frontier so as to illuminate other aspects of the empire's functioning.

The author has used an extraordinary abundance of sources, relying primarily on the Ottoman archives but also examining a commendable range of other primary materials. He has also found much useful material in secondary works written in Arabic, a source often neglected by historians.

The author has incorporated into this short book a great deal of useful information and even more important theoretical and analytical considerations. One example among many is his plea to ignore artificial divisions that discourage historians from comparing north-eastern Africa and Arabia. This monograph is also a stimulating addition to the corpus of revisionist scholarship on the period of Sultan ʿAbdulhamid II. The reader would find it useful to compare The Ottoman Scramble for Africa with Thomas Kuehn's Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference: Ottoman Rule in Yemen, 1849–1919 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Minawi's work is important particularly for new views of Ottoman activist diplomacy and imperial policies on the Ottoman frontiers.