Mostafa Minawi's book makes a major contribution to discourses about late nineteenth-century non-European colonialism in general and Ottoman colonialism in Africa in particular. Drawing upon a wide range of theoretical paradigms and using historical sources in Near Eastern and European languages, Minawi has written an impressive work. His book offers revisions of the traditional and conservative assumptions regarding the ‘passive’ Ottoman Empire within its Arabian and African frontiers during the period of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876–1908).

Minawi has successfully woven the personal political biography of Sadiq al-Muʼayyad al-ʽAzm (d. October 1910, Istanbul), scion of the famous al-ʽAzm family of Damascus, into the Ottoman and European colonial contexts of the late nineteenth century. Sadiq al-Muʼayyad al-ʽAzm paşa was a farīq (lieutenant-general) in the Ottoman army and became aide-de-camp of Sultan Abdülhamid II. On the sultan's orders, al-ʽAzm was sent in 1886 and 1895 to Benghazi to make and sign contracts with the local political and religious leaders of the nomadic Muslim populations of the inner Sahara. Al-ʽuslim missions can be seen not only as reactions to the Italian imperial ambitions in Tripolitania at that time, but also as an integral part of the efforts of Sultan Abdülhamid II to influence Muslim groups and movements that were not under the authority of the official Ottoman religious institutions, focusing on the Arab and North African so-called ‘peripheries’ of the Ottoman Empire. During the 1890s, al-ʽAzm supervised the construction of the Hijaz telegraph line, and in 1901 he became vice-director of the Directorate for establishing the Hijaz railway. Minawi's excellent use of al-ʽAzm's diaries and correspondence enhances our knowledge of both the political and social complexity within the empire's Arabian and African frontiers and the European imperial threats to Ottoman interests in these areas.

The book consists of a preface, an introduction, and six chapters. The preface introduces Sadiq al-Muʼayyad al-ʽAzm, who also appears under the name Azamzade in Ottoman official correspondence, due to his activities in an imperial Turkish-speaking environment. The introduction surveys the main theoretical arguments regarding colonialism and throws light on the geopolitical and historical Ottoman contexts from the time of the conference of Berlin (1884–5) onward. The first two chapters deal with Ottoman Libya, the Sahara, and the Lake Chad basin, analyzing Istanbul's strategies of re-establishing its rule through its complicated interactions with the Sanusi order. These chapters set the stage for understanding the era after the Berlin conference in this part of Africa, revealing Istanbul's multifaceted strategies and activities in the scramble for Africa.

Chapter Three examines the Ottoman diplomatic failures in the late nineteenth-century's inter-imperial competition over North Africa and the Horn of Africa. It analyzes what Minawi terms as the ‘Ottoman diplomacy of denial’ and its consequences, which also shifted Istanbul's efforts from territorial expansion to fortification and consolidation of its rule among African Muslim nomadic groups and Arab Bedouin populations. Chapter Four overviews these new Ottoman strategies on the empire's southern frontiers, and on both sides of the Red Sea during 1894–9. Nonetheless, Minawi does not totally distinguish between Ottoman frontiers and strategies in Africa and the variety of strategies in other parts of the Ottoman Empire. By highlighting the influences of one geopolitical part of the empire on another, this chapter frequently demonstrates the necessity of a trans-imperial approach to the study of empire. The last two chapters cast new light on the Arabian frontiers of the empire, focusing on the Damascus-Medina telegraph line extension project as a case study of Istanbul's new policy of consolidating its hold on its areas. In addition, these chapters analyze the Arabian frontiers by the turn of the century as an arena for trans-imperial strategies, in which inter-imperial and regional issues repeatedly had global implications.

Minawi's book offers many thought-provoking insights and greatly broadens our understanding of the political and social history of the African and the Arabian provinces of the Ottoman Empire by the time of the late nineteenth century. The book's later chapters portray well the multiple dimensions of the new wave of globalization of the era and the increased involvement of the great powers as they gained control in Africa and the eastern regions of the Mediterranean basin. The book offers a welcome additional layer to our understanding of the later parts of the rule of Sultan Abdülhamid II, as well as to the current theoretical and historical discourses of Ottoman and other patterns of non-European colonialism. Minawi's book demonstrates once again the importance of exploring unfulfilled goals and unfinished plans rather than judging outcomes as ‘failures’. The book will attract the interest of specialists of the Ottoman Empire and European imperial history in Africa, as well as Africanists and general researchers of colonialism.