"For generations the great powers and their leaders struggled with the problems created by the weakness and slow disintegration of the ottoman empire and with the rivalries among the states of Europe to which it gave rise; then strategic and economic factors - seen, for example, in the building of the suez canal in Baghdad Railway scheme -- combined with the growing nationalism of the small Balkan peoples and the development of Panslavism in Russia to complicate the picture. In a masterly clarification the author surveys the development over a period of a century and a half of one of the greatest issues, or series of issues, in international relations in Europe. This book is based on an extremely wide range of printed materials, including many in russian as well as in west European languages, and thus brings together in a convenient and coherent form a great deal of important information, much of which would otherwise be inaccessible. No work in English of comparable scope and purpose has appeared since the publication in 1917 of J. A. R. Marriot's The Eastern Question; An Historical Study in European Diplomacy. -- Publisher.