Journal•ISSN: 0951-8967
Mediterranean Historical Review
Taylor & Francis
About: Mediterranean Historical Review is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Empire & Judaism. It has an ISSN identifier of 0951-8967. Over the lifetime, 546 publications have been published receiving 4063 citations.
Topics: Empire, Judaism, Fifteenth, Byzantine architecture, Ancient history
Papers published on a yearly basis
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TL;DR: The concept of networks, now common in a variety of current discourses from brain science to postmodernism and globalization, is also a salient heuristic concept for the Mediterranean as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The concept of networks, now common in a variety of current discourses from brain science to postmodernism and globalization, is also a salient heuristic concept for the Mediterranean. Shying away ...
80 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The Corrupting Sea as mentioned in this paper is a rich and fascinating history of the Mediterranean, and it merits close attention from historians well beyond the shores of the Med. In fact, there are at least three books here (in addition to a second volume in preparation): a general argument for studying the history of Mediterranean, an attempt to identify its underlying unities without succumbing to superficial similarities or effacing diversity, and a showcase of case studies, unresolved questions, and research projects demonstrating that the effort is worthwhile.
Abstract: Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell’s rich and fascinating The Corrupting Sea merits close attention from historians well beyond the shores of the Mediterranean. In fact, there are at least three books here (in addition to a second volume in preparation): a general argument for studying the history of the Mediterranean, an attempt to identify its underlying unities without succumbing to superficial similarities or effacing diversity, and a showcase of case studies, unresolved questions, and research projects demonstrating that the effort is worthwhile. Setting aside the ubiquitous talk about the unity of Europe (encouraged, no doubt, beyond the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, not so much by Braudelian conceptions as by Brusselian research funds), how serious are historians about doing a history of Europe? Is there a research agenda that actually promises something comparable to Horden and Purcell’s bold attempt to write a (rightly and fruitfully contested) history of the Mediterranean? It is precisely because this task presents such obstacles and because a book of this sort has to come to terms with the accumulated weight of stereotypes and projections (not to speak of the mass of detailed, differentiating studies) that The Corrupting Sea should be of primary interest to ‘Europeanists’. In this review I confine myself to drawing attention to some of the important issues that it raises.
78 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare the boundaries implied by traditional accounts of the Mediterranean with those that would follow from the hypotheses of The Corrupting Sea, and the essential variable turns out to be complexity, in which the connectivity of the monograph plays the most important role.
Abstract: In this preliminary attempt to compare the boundaries implied by traditional accounts of the Mediterranean with those that would follow from the hypotheses of The Corrupting Sea, the essential variable turns out to be complexity, in which the ‘connectivity’ of the monograph plays the most important role. Defining Mediterranean space in this way avoids some disadvantages of traditional views and fits more closely with cultural preoccupations in at least some periods of Mediterranean history. It also offers easier ways of building the Mediterranean into ‘connected histories’ of much larger geographical reference.
65 citations
TL;DR: For both (primarily local) Jews and Muslims, becoming Catholic in seventeenth-century Venice entailed a prolonged process of social transformation and insertion into new relations of patronage and surrogate kinship as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: For both (primarily local) Jews and (primarily immigrant) Muslims, becoming Catholic in seventeenth-century Venice entailed a prolonged process of social transformation and insertion into new relations of patronage and surrogate kinship. This article traces these converts' long trajectories after baptism and their ongoing relationship with a charitable institution, the Pia Casa dei Catecumeni (Holy House of the Catechumens). It shows how the Pia Casa was instrumental in shaping distinct forms of charity and surveillance that brought together Venetian elites' corporate spiritual and civic claims while also furthering their individual and family interests by weaving dense networks of patronage. Ultimately, the article considers how conversion operated as a project of metropolitan subject making in the context of Venetian–Ottoman imperial competition.
58 citations
TL;DR: The role of the Mediterranean in maintaining the political and economic cohesion of the Roman empire up to the fifth century CE, and the role of Vandals in disrupting its unity is discussed in this article.
Abstract: The present article is a preliminary study for a revision of the role that the Mediterranean played in the transition of western Europe from antiquity to the Middle Ages. It re‐examines the significance of the Mediterranean in maintaining the political and economic cohesion of the Roman empire up to the fifth century CE, and reviews the role of the Vandal realm in Northern Africa in disrupting its unity. On the other hand it presents a brief survey of the peculiar character of the relationships that evolved between the eastern Roman empire (Byzantium) and the Sassanian Persian empire. It is suggested that it was mainly in consequence of the growing interdependence between these two great powers of late antiquity that the eastern and western parts of the Roman empire drifted apart. The Vandals stepped into a vacuum in the western Mediterranean. Justinian's attempted reconquest of the west was foredoomed to failure, since it entailed the termination of the symbiotic relations that had developed with Persia ...
56 citations