Histories of a Sea: Commerce, Culture and Material Conditions in the Mediterranean World (original) (raw)

The Mediterranean in History and Anthropology (Seminar Syllabus, Columbia University, spring 2017)

Spring 2017 --Seminar Monday, 4--6 pm Office hours: Thursday 5--6 pm and by appointment, Hamilton 513 COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will offer an overview of historical and anthropological writing on the Mediterranean from the birth of the field through the pages of Fernard Braudel's celebrated book in the 1940s to the present day. It will trace the shifts in the ways we understand the Mediterranean by examining the sea as a malleable geographical space, which changes over time. It will explore topics such as the macro--and micro--histories of the Sea; the 'history in' and the 'history of' the Mediterranean; 'anti--Meditterraneanism'; the revolutionary Mediterraneans; the colonial Mediterranean; the Grand Tour; the migrants in the Mediterranean; Italy in the Mediterranean, and others. Looking at the sea can tell us a lot about human life on land and can change our perspective on how we view this and other parts of the world.

The Mediterranean World and Beyond, Summary in English

The " return " of the Mediterranean as the major focus of European politics in the period following the year 1000 has long since been defined by R. W. Southern as a phenomenon of special impact on the making of European culture and civilization of the high Middle Ages and the early modern period. Correct as much as it is a generalization, given from the perspective of Western European centrality and even, one might add, a colonialist methodological approach, this statement does, after all, sum up the essential idea of the Mediterranean as a nexus of networks, connectivity and cross-cultural currents which has defined European culture from the earliest days to the present. The historiography on the Mediterranean and Mediterranean studies is practically as vast as the Mare Nostrum itself. The past decade especially has seen a great expansion in this field of study with a substantial increase in the number of conferences, publications, scholarly journals and even academic positions emerging to reflect growing interest in this field of research. This year marks the 66 th anniversary of publication of Fernand Braudel's seminal study on the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II. For Braudel there is no single Mediterranean. There are many seas connected into one truly vast, complex space in which people operate. Life goes on against the backdrop and within the majestic scenography provided by the sea. People travel, fish, wage war and live among its most diverse aspects and contexts. The sea itself is articulated by its terra ferma and its islands. Life on the littoral is diverse and varied. The less affluent south is colored by religious pluralism; Christianity meets Islam, as well as incursions, both cultural and economic, from the wealthier north. In other words, the Mediterranean cannot be understood regardless of what lies outside it, strictly speaking outside the sea itself. Any rigid dependence on the idea of strictly drawn delineations creates a false image of the actual situation. Just like space, time in the Mediterranean is just as layered. The first level of chronology is geographic time, that is the natural surroundings with its slow, practically invisible changes, its cycles of repetition. Such changes can be slow but they are still unavoidable, they cannot be resisted. The second level includes long term, longue durée, processes of social, economic and cultural history, which evolve through

A Colonial Sea: the Mediterranean, 1798–1956

European Review of History-revue Europeenne D Histoire, 2012

The Mediterranean has been a colonial sea since ancient times. While historians of the pre- and early modern world still tend to describe this region with the Braudelian paradigms of unity and continuity, the historiography of the modern Mediterranean suffers from the widespread fragmentation of national and regional studies, including important contributions on the colonial history of North Africa and the Middle East. In this context, the editors invited scholars to re-think the Mediterranean of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century as a colonial and, most importantly, a colonised sea. Therefore the special issue brings together historians and geographers from North Africa, Europe and North America in order to reconstruct colonial interactions, relationships, entanglements and shared experiences between Europe, the Maghreb and the Middle East from late eighteenth century, when the European colonisation of the Mediterranean began, until the erosion of the imperial order in the 1950s.

Mediterranean Europe(s) Rethinking Europe from Its Southern Shores

Mediterranean Europe(s) Rethinking Europe from Its Southern Shores, 2022

This book investigates how ideas of and discourses about Europe have been affected by images of the Mediterranean Sea and its many worlds from the nineteenth century onwards. Surprisingly, modern scholars have often neglected such an influence and, in fact, in most histories of the idea of Europe the Mediterranean is conspicuously absent. This might partly be explained by the fact that historians have often identified Europe with modernity (and the Atlantic world) and, therefore, in opposition to the classical world (centred around the Mediterranean). This book will challenge such views, showing that a plethora of thinkers, from the early nineteenth century to the present, have refused to relegate the Mediterranean to the past. Importance is given to the idea of a distinct 'meridian thought', a notion first set forth by Albert Camus and now reworked by French and Italian thinkers. As most chapters argue, this might represent an important tool for rethinking the Mediterranean, and, in turn, it might help us challenge received notions about European identity and rethink Europe as the locus of 'modernity'. Mediterranean Europe(s): Rethinking Europe from Its Southern Shores will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in European studies and Mediterranean history.

The Mediterranean and "Mediterranean Studies": An Editor's Retrospective

Mediterranean Studies, 2020

abstract:This essay focuses on the meaning of "Mediterranean" and "Mediterranean studies," offers an overview of the author's tenure as editor of the journal Mediterranean Studies (2001–11), and provides reminiscences of the Congresses and educational post tours organized by the Mediterranean Studies Association. A singularly capacious view of what defines the Mediterranean and the complexities of the field of Mediterranean studies emerge from an examination of articles published in the journal and from a cluster of experiences that the Mediterranean Studies Association has bundled into a package, including the international Annual Congresses, the journal, and the educational post tours. The post tours in Rio de Janeiro (2000); in Southwestern France, the sites associated with the Cathars, Andorra, and Aragon (2004); on the Island of Sardinia and the Island of Corsica (2009); and in Epirus, Western Greece, and Albania (2011) are highlighted to underscore scho...