The mediterranean and "the new thalassology"

American Historical Review

Volumn 111, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 722-740

  Horden, Peregrine ^a   Purcell, Nicholas ^b,c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^c St John's College   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33749997152     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/ahr.111.3.722     Document Type: Review

References (118)

1. J. J. Cohen, "Introduction," in Cohen, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2000), 7:
2. "a postcolonial Middle Ages has no frontiers, only heterogeneous borderlands with multiple centers." See also W. D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton, N.J., 2000).
3. Rena Lederman, "Globalization and the Future of Culture Areas," Annual Review of Anthropology 21 (1998): 427-449.
4. To be distinguished from the older world-systems theory: e.g., P. N. Kardulias, World-Systems Theory in Practice: Leadership, Production, and Exchange (Lanham, Md., 1999);
5. T. D. Hall, A WorldSystems Reader (Lanham, Md., 2000).
6. R. Bin Wong, "Entre monde et nation: Les régions braudéliennes en Asie," Annales 56, no. 1 (2001): 5-41;
7. Maurice Aymard, "De la Méditerranée à l'Asie: Une comparaison nécessaire (commentaire)," Annales 56, no. 1 (2001): 43-50.
8. David Abulafia, "Mediterraneans," in William V. Harris, ed., Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford, 2005), 64-93.
9. On the Sahara, see also Méditerranée 99, no. 3-4 (2002), "Le Sahara, cette 'autre Méditerranée.'"
10. From the ancient Greek thalassa, "sea." Edward Peters, "Quid nobis cum pelago? The New Thalassology and the Economic History of Europe," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34 (2003): 49-61;
11. Brent Shaw, "A Peculiar Island: Maghrib and Mediterranean," Mediterranean Historical Review 18 (2003): 93-125.
12. Frederick L. Wernstedt and J. E. Spencer, The Philippine Island World: A Physical, Cultural, and Regional Geography (Berkeley, Calif., 1967), is still the starting point.
13. Barry Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples (Oxford, 2001).
14. See also Rupert A. Housley and Geraint Coles, eds., Atlantic Connections and Adaptations: Economies, Environments and Subsistence in Lands Bordering the North Atlantic (Oxford, 2001).
15. David Armitage, "Three Concepts of Atlantic History," in David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (Basingstoke, 2002), 14-15.
16. Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley, Calif., 1997);
17. Daniel Finamore, ed., Maritime History as World History (Gainesville, Fla., 2004).
18. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2000), 38
19. on Braudel. Contrast Felipe Fernández-Armesto, "Maritime History and World History," in Finamore, Maritime History, 8.
20. Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 24-25.
21. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (New York, 1976).
22. For Braudel's intellectual biography and his influence on sea and ocean history, see references in Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 542-543.
23. Add now John A. Marino, ed.,Early Modern History and the Social Sciences: Testing the Limits of Braudel's Mediterranean (Kirksville, Mich., 2002).
24. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1244.
25. Mediterranean, Ibid., 1239.
26. Mediterranean, Ibid., 170, 394-396.
27. Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971), 20, 23;
28. Abulafia, "Mediterraneans," 66, 81.
29. See also Pierre Cabens, ed., Histoire de l'Adriatique (Paris, 2001).
30. Charles King, The Black Sea: A History (Oxford, 2004).
31. Abulafia, "Mediterraneans," 85-90.
32. Paul Sant Cassia, "Authors in Search of a Character: Personhood, Agency and Identity in the Mediterranean," Journal of Mediterranean Studies 1 (1991): 1-17.
33. Braudel, Mediterranean, 15.
34. For some bibliography, see Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 26-29, 538-540.
35. Bertram C. Gordon, "The Mediterranean as a Tourist Destination from Classical Antiquity to Club Med," Mediterranean Studies 12 (2003): 203-226.
36. In Harris, Rethinking the Mediterranean, 45-63.
37. See also Herzfeld, "Performing Comparisons: Ethnography, Globetrotting, and the Spaces of Social Knowledge," Journal of Anthropological Research 57 (2001): 265-267.
38. For Victoria A. Goddard, Josep R. Llobera, and Cris Shore, the Mediterranean was invented in the 1960s and passed its sell-by date in the 1980s. "Introduction: The Anthropology of Europe," in Goddard, Llobera, and Shore, eds., The Anthropology of Europe: Identity and Boundaries in Conflict (Oxford, 1994), 4, 20-23.
39. By Roger Bagnall, at the conference held at the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean, Columbia University, September 21-22, 2001, at which Herzfeld's paper originated.
40. For the political dimension of "the Mediterranean" in Israeli "public discourse," see Yaacov Shavit, "Mediterranean History and the History of the Mediterranean: Further Reflections," Journal of Mediterranean Studies 4 (1994): 313-329.
41. Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 486-487, 522-523;
42. Herzfeld, Anthropology through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography on the Margins of Europe (Cambridge, 1987);
43. J. de Pina-Cabral, "The Mediterranean as a Category of Regional Comparison: A Critical View," Current Anthropology 30 (1989): 399-406.
44. See also Yaacov Shavit, "The Mediterranean World and 'Mediterraneanism': The Origins, Meaning, and Application of a Geo-Cultural Notion in Israel," Mediterranean Historical Review 3 (1988): 96-117.
45. It is worth attempting to plead for consistent use of labels. In both Ian Morris, "Moditerraneanization," Mediterranean Historical Review 18 (2003): 30-55,
46. and Greg Woolf, "A Sea of Faith," ibid., 126-143, "Mediterraneanism" is used to mean Mediterranean exceptionalism, rather than the subtler object of Herzfeld's critique; or even more baldly, "great interest in the Mediterranean as a historical object" (Morris, 35-37).
47. Cf. Woolf, "Sea of Faith," 140: "the most useful units of study... are either larger or smaller than the Mediterranean world."
48. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978);
49. also James G. Carrier, ed., Occidentalism: Images of the West (Oxford, 1995).
50. For further bibliography, see U. Freitag, "The Critique of Orientalism," in Michael Bentley, ed., Companion to Historiography (London, 1997), 620-638.
51. Braudel, Mediterranean, 17.
52. Braudel's experience in Algeria may be more relevant than his passion. See Pierre Daix, Braudel (Paris, 1995).
53. " See also his Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993).
54. We attempt an anthropological rejoinder in Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 487-523.
55. See, e.g., Jane Schneider, ed., Italy's "Southern Question": Orientalism in One Country (Oxford, 1998);
56. Nelson Moe, The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkeley, Calif., 2002);
57. Thomas W. Gallant, Experiencing Dominion: Culture, Identity, and Power in the British Mediterranean (Notre Dame, Ind., 2002), esp. 35-36,
58. on the "Mediterranean Irish" of the Ionian Islands; Ussama Makdisi, "Ottoman Orientalism," AHR 107, no. 3 (June 2002): 768-796.
59. R. Peet, "The Social Origins of Environmental Determinism," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 75 (1985): 309-333.
60. Theobald Fischer, Mittelmeerbilder: Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Kunde der Mittelmeerländer (1906; repr., Leipzig, 1913),
61. See also Lucien Febvre, A Geographical Introduction to History (London, 1932), 41;
62. W. Stroch and G. Meiring, La méditerranée allemande (Paris, 2000).
63. Daniel Nordman, "La Méditerranée dans la pensée geographique française (vers 1800-vers 1950)," in Claude Guillot, Denys Lombard, and Roderich Ptak, eds., From the Mediterranean to the China Sea: Miscellaneous Notes (Wiesbaden, 1998), 1-20.
64. For the background, see Christopher Drew Armstrong, "Travel and Experience in the Mediterranean of Louis XV," in Harris, Rethinking the Mediterranean, 235-237.
65. Nordman, "Méditerranée," 18.
66. " See also Shavit, "The Mediterranean World and 'Mediterraneanism.'"
67. An impression derived from "googling."
68. Armitage, "Three Concepts," 12.
69. Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 39-43.
70. Braudel, The Mediterranean in the Ancient World, trans. Siân Reynolds (1998; repr., London, 2001).
71. See also Braudel, "Fernand Braudel, l'antiquité et l'histoire ancienne" [interview with J. Andreau, M. Aymard, and R. Etienne, April 29, 1985], Quademi di Storia 12, no. 24 (1986): 5-21.
72. Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 2, 9
73. . See also Shavit, "Mediterranean History and the History of the Mediterranean," for a third category, "Mediterranean history," which presupposes cultural uniformity as well as unity.
74. Susan E. Alcock, "Alphabet Soup in the Mediterranean Basin: The Emergence of the Mediterranean Serial," in Harris, Rethinking the Mediterranean, 314-338;
75. Morris, "Mediterraneanization," 34-35.
76. Jean Carpentier and François Lebrun, eds., Histoire de la Méditerranée (Paris, 1998).
77. Une leçon d'histoire de Fernand Braudel: Châteauvallon, Journées Fernand Braudel, 18, 19 et 20 Octobre, 1985 (Paris, 1986), pis. 19-20, facing 161.
78. See Carpentier and Lebrun, Histoire de la Méditerranée, 231, 502-503, for Vatican II (also, e.g., 167 on Gregorian Reform).
79. Ted Steinberg, "Down to Earth: Nature, Agency, and Power in History," AHR 107, no. 3 (June 2002): 798-820.
80. The Mediterranean gets little attention in John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier; An Environmental History of the Earfy Modern World (Berkeley, Calif., 2003).
81. Predrag Matvejević, Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape, trans. Michael Henry Heim (1987; repr., Berkeley, Calif., 1999).
82. Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape, Ibid., 30, 43, 32, 63, 38.
83. David Abulafia, ed., The Mediterranean in History (London, 2003).
84. Vol. 1 of our Study of Mediterranean History was The Corrupting Sea,
85. its title explained in the opening epigraphs. Vol. 2, Liquid Continents,
86. which concentrates on the boundaries of the Mediterranean, is in progress. What follows also draws on Purcell, "The Boundless Sea of Unlikeness? On Defining the Mediterranean," Mediterranean Historical Review 18 (December 2003): 9-29,
87. and on Horden and Purcell, "Four Years of Corruption: A Response to Critics," in Harris, Rethinking the Mediterranean, 348-376.
88. Braudel, Mediterranean, 168-170, 234-238.
89. Braudel, ibid., 234-235, recognized that the Mediterranean was actually the overlap of other climatic zones, and that it was climatically diverse itself; but he maintained its impressionistic coherence in the face of this realization.
90. See also Henk Driessen, "Pre- and Post-Braudelian Conceptions of the Mediterranean Area: The Puzzle of Boundaries," Narodna umjetnost: Croatian Journal of Ethnology and Folklore Research 36, no. 1 (1999): 53-63.
91. Braudel, Mediterranean, 26-27.
92. To cite only one instance: C. Higham, The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia from 10,000 B.C. to the Fall of Angkor (Cambridge, 1989), 1-14, for ecological diversity in this region.
93. See also D. Ludden, An Agrarian History of South Asia (London, 1999).
94. Stephen A. Royle, A Geography of Islands: Small Island Insularity (London, 2001).
95. Braudel, Mediterranean, 168.
96. For what follows, see Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 10-13, 530-533;
97. Purcell, "Boundless Sea of Unlikeness?" 13-16.
98. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, 13.16.1,
99. in Isidore, Maori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX, ed. Wallace Martin Lindsay, 2 vols. (1911; repr., Oxford, 1985), 2: 98. There are likely to have been earlier such works, now lost.
100. Bodley, MS Arab. c. 90, fols. 30b-31a. The MS is due to be published in summer 2006 at www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/bookofcuriosities.
101. Purcell, "Boundless Sea," 15-16. The Romans, for instance, did not incorporate any "Mediterraneanness" into their self-definition as empire builders, but they gave full symbolic play to the contrast between communicable littoral and the impenetrable forests, mountains, and deserts of the continental interiors.
102. Plutarch, Life of Kimon, 13, 19.
103. Laws, 704-705.
104. Appian, Libyca, 73.
105. Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 523.
106. Morris, "Mediterraneanization," 37.
107. Herzfeld, "Practical Mediterraneanism," 50.
108. Regimen [Peri diaites], 68.
109. http://www.duke.edu/web/oceans/project.html.
110. Nils Blomkvist, The Discovery of the Baltic: The Reception of a Catholic World-System in the European North (AD 1075-1225) (Leiden, 2005).
111. For the possible counterexample of the Indian Ocean, see Kurti N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1985),
112. and Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1990), 70.
113. But the "unities of material life" are identified in only very abstract terms. Cf. Alain Bresson, "Ecology and Beyond: The Mediterranean Paradigm," in Harris, Rethinking, 111-112,
114. citing André Wink, "From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean: Medieval History in Geographic Perspective," Comparative Studies in Society and History 44 (2002): 416-445,
115. on the very un-Mediterranean ecological milieus surrounding the Indian Ocean. Note also the avowedly maritime perspective of Michael Pearson, The Indian Ocean (London, 2003), 5.
116. Armitage, "Three Concepts," 15-25.
117. Morris, "Mediterraneanization," 43-46;
118. Shaw, "Peculiar Island."