Suez e il «Grande gioco mediterraneo». Dagli albori della «Questione d’Oriente» all’Operation Musketeer

The narrow strip of land that separated the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea constituted, even before the construction of the Suez Canal, an area of great strategic importance. From the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire (1774) to the Napoleonic Wars, until the Crimean War this region became the theatre of the «Great Mediterranean Game» engaged between Tsarist Russia, France and the United Kingdom (1798 - 1856). This power-conflict continued after the construction of the Canal (November 1869) and the Constantinople Convention (October 1888), during the First and Second World War, also involving regional actors, such as Italy, until the Suez crisis of 1956