The outbreak of the Balkan wars in October 1912, and the collapse of Turkey in Europe by the end of the year caused the statesmen of Austria-Hungary to do some rethinking. Their efforts to control developments in the Balkans and to prevent an inordinate strengthening of Serbia are well known: less so are their reflections on the future destiny of The Ottoman Empire's Asian territories, and the plans they made to secure for themselves a share of the spoils should Ottoman rule in Asia Minor collapse under the strain of war. The new situation had arisen as a result of political changes, and the motivation of Austria-Hungary's venture so far afield was also political. The loss of Balkan trade due to the political reorganization of the peninsula only gradually became clear to the government ;2 and among commercial circles there was at first absolutely no pressure to found colonies-this had to be stirred up artificially by the government. The new venture was based on the old quest for prestige, or, rather, on that concern to avoid losing prestige which was to become a neurotic obsession in Vienna in the last years of peace. And as a political move, it was undertaken by the Ballhausplatz and its diplomatic representatives, by approaches to the Ottoman Empire, Italy and Germany. Its success would depend largely on whether these two latter powers would put the, in the last resort, psychological needs of their ally before their own commercial interests. The project itself had wide and embarrassing repercussions: Austria-Hungary found herself involved in Anglo-Italian negotiations, and in clearing up the remnants of the ItaloOttoman war; and all this at a time when her own relations with Italy were clouded by rivalry in Albania. To succeed, she would probably need more skill and experience of the diplomacy of Asia Minor than the Ballhausplatz would be likely to provide. It is true that Austria-Hungary had had connections of a non-political kind with Asia Minor for some years. In 1881 and 1882 two Austrian archaeologists, Grenndorf and Niemann, had made investigations in southern Anatolia ;3 and there were some Austro-Hungarian trade and shipping interests in the area-only surpassed, according to an optimistic 'colonialist' view of February 1914, by those of Britain and Egypt.4 Nevertheless, it was power-political considerations that, early in 1913, led Count Berchtold, Austro-Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs, to take up the question of Austria-Hungary's acquiring a political foothold in Asia Minor. In a secret dispatch of January 17 to Petrovich, AustroHungarian Consul-General at Alexandria, he speculated as to whether a sudden collapse of Turkey-in-Asia was likely to follow on the loss of her African and European possessions.5 It was of course possible-and Berchtold hoped-that Turkey, freed from her Libyan and Macedonian