<P> As the 19th century progressed the Ottoman Empire grew weaker and Britain increasingly became its chief ally and protector, even fighting the Crimean War in the 1850s to help it out against Russia . Three British leaders played major roles . Lord Palmerston in the 1830 - 65 era considered the Ottoman Empire an essential component in the balance of power, was the most favourable toward Constantinople . William Gladstone in the 1870s sought to build a Concert of Europe that would support the survival of the empire . In the 1880s and 1890s Lord Salisbury contemplated an orderly dismemberment of it, in such a way as to reduce rivalry between the greater powers . </P> <P> A successful uprising against the Ottomans marked the foundation of modern Serbia . The Serbian Revolution took place between 1804 and 1835, as this territory evolved from an Ottoman province into a constitutional monarchy and a modern Serbia . The first part of the period, from 1804 to 1815, was marked by a violent struggle for independence with two armed uprisings . The later period (1815--1835) witnessed a peaceful consolidation of political power of the increasingly autonomous Serbia, culminating in the recognition of the right to hereditary rule by Serbian princes in 1830 and 1833 and the territorial expansion of the young monarchy . The adoption of the first written Constitution in 1835 abolished feudalism and serfdom, and made the country suzerain </P> <P> The Crimean War (1853--56) was fought between Russia on the one hand and an alliance of Great Britain, France, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire on the other . Russia was defeated . </P> <P> In 1851 France under Napoleon III compelled the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman or Turkish government) to recognize it as the protector of Christian sites in the Holy Land . Russia denounced this claim, since it claimed to be the protector of all Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire . France sent its fleet to the Black Sea; Russia responded with its own show of force . In 1851, Russia sent troops into the Ottoman provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia . Britain, now fearing for the security of the Ottoman Empire, sent a fleet to join with the French expecting the Russians would back down . </P>

On the eve of world war i the main rivalry in europe was between these two nations