The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean [Hardcover]

This book, the cover tells me, `is the first complete history of the Mediterranean from the erection of the mysterious temples on Malta around 3500 BC to the recent invention of the Mediterranean's shores as a tourist destination'. I was immediately fascinated: how does a history of a sea read? People interact with the sea in a number of ways, but they don't live on it. What facts become important, which aspects of human civilisation will feature, and why?

David Abulafia is professor of Mediterranean history at Cambridge and in this book he sets out the presence of the people who have lived around the Mediterranean from around 22000 BC to 2010 AD. This is a history of the people who `dipped their toes in the sea, and, best of all, took journeys across it.' The book is divided into five chronological sections:

The First Mediterranean 22000 BC - 1000 BC
The Second Mediterranean 1000 BC - 600 AD
The Third Mediterranean 600 AD - 1350 AD
The Fourth Mediterranean 1350 AD - 1830 AD
The Fifth Mediterranean 1830 AD - 2010 AD

Each section of the book opens and closes a period of the sea's history during which trade, cultural exchanges and empires act as unifiers before the process stops or reverses. Some of those significant events include the collapse of the Roman Empire, the impact of the Black Death and more recently the building of the Suez Canal.

`The history of the Mediterranean has been presented in this book as a series of phases in which the sea was, to a greater or lesser extent, integrated into a single economic and even political area. With the coming of the Fifth Mediterranean the whole character of this process changed. The Mediterranean became the great artery through which goods, warships, migrants and other travellers reached the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic.'

There's a wealth of information here: about the great port cities (including Alexandria, Salonika and Trieste); about the space of the Mediterranean from Jaffa in the east to Gibraltar in the west, from Venice in the north to Alexandria in the south. As part of the narrative, Professor Abulafia includes information about people whose lives illuminate the developments he is describing: a diversity of ethnic, linguistic, political and religious influences. We meet the Venetian merchant Romano Mairano, and the Arab traveller Ibn Jubayr. We read, too, of Shabbetai Zevi, described as a deluded Messiah in 17th century Smyrna.

Of most interest to me was the role of the Mediterranean in trade. The merchant is a critical figure. The Phoenicians spread the alphabet across the Mediterranean: how else can merchants create the records they need? The merchants carry essentials such as grain and salt, but they also carry ideas, plagues and religions across the sea. Not all interactions are peaceful, and different people (including members of minorities) make different contributions across culture and creed.

I would have to read the book at least once more to fully appreciate Professor Abulafia's coverage: while the book is easy to read there is a huge amount of information to read and absorb. There is a map included in each chapter, which I found very helpful in placing the narrative.

This is an amazing book and well worth reading by anyone with an interest in the history of the Mediterranean Sea.

`Rather than searching for unity we should note diversity.'

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Abulafi brings the Mediterranean to life in the best tradition of history writing. The subject is vast - and the book is accordingly long - but Abulafi's touch is both elegant and scholarly. All epochs, through nearly three millennia, receive detailed attention: there is no skipping through periods that the writer feels less interesting, since he is clearly fascinated by all.
As history I would put this in the same class as N.A.M. Rodger. Anyone who feels that history merits the very best writing would do well to buy this book, for it absorbs, informs and enchants.

I was looking forward to Professor Abulafia new general history of the Mediterranean, anticipating a scholarly and less Eurocentric account than Lord Norwich 'Middle Sea'.To his credit he offers a more oecumenical account attempting to strike a balance between Antiquity and Modern Times, the North and the South , the West and the East.However any Historian seeking to tackle such a huge task is presented with the dilemma of what to include and what to leave out, how to balance the requirements of scholarship and those of writing popular history.In fact how do you write a 'Human History' if you exclude in your account the ordinary common people,how they lived and struggled on a daily basis through the ages, what brought them together and what separated them, what pushed them to migrate, convert to a new religion or rob and attack their neighbours, how did they cope with plagues? In that respect he fails to convince as we are treated to another chronology of events which is partial to the author's area of expertise thus devoting about a third of the text to the late Medieval and 15th century periods?
I don't underestimate his achievement and there are laudable passages in this chronicle.For example he emphasises the crucial contribution of the Phoenicians as indefatigable seafarers and city builders in Antiquity.The author gives due importance to the cultural predominance of Ptolemaic Alexandria for centuries, but somehow chooses to ignore its prominence in Roman and Byzantine times with its crucial role in producing the most important philosophy of Late Antiquity namely Neoplatonism(Plotinus and Porphyry were Alexandrians)as well as forging the dogmas of Early Christianity(Origen, Clement and Athanasius)
I particularly enjoyed his objective account of the Mediterranean Piracy ,as he swept away major recent misconceptions about the subject by showing that the phenomenon of Privateering was not the preserve of the Barbary Corsairs,it existed on both sides of the Sea. Muslims were as likely to be its victims as Christians.Renegades who often changed sides were only motivated by profit rather than by religious animosity.
Nevertheless there are puzzling omissions, as he purports to be the historian of the cultural crossroads.For instance his complete silence about the role of Salerno medical school in reviving Western medicine through the import of Islamic lore.Maimonides the Jewish medieval philosopher is mentioned in the text but not his near contemporary from Cordoba,the great Averroes(Ibn Rushd)who exercised a great influence on the Scholastic Medieval Philosophy.Again very little is mentioned about the 'convivencia' of Jew, Christian and Moslem in Muslim Andalucia and Norman Sicily.There is a frustrating lack of analysis as to the respective roles of the rise of 20th century Nationalism and the global economic changes leading to the decline of the great cosmopolitan ports of the Mediterranean.(see Mansel's The Levant)
Abulafia makes no secret that this book is a personal project aiming at the celebration of his ancestors' contribution.We are treated to the biographies of a number of Abulafias, who are minor actors and of little relevance to the wider narrative.The Sephardic trade diaspora occupies the lion's share of his historical preoccupation with transcultural trade. This leads him to bizarre digressions for example the four pages account devoted to Shabbetai Zevi,an eccentric Jewish apostate of the 17th century.
No one disputes the centrality of the Sephardic contribution to Mediterranean trade, particularly after the discovery of the Geniza documents, it takes however a disproportionate importance in the text at the expense of other trade diasporas which are hardly mentioned in this chronicle, namely the Armenians, the Levantine Arabs, the Greeks, the Turks let alone the French and British traders established since the 16th century in countries ruled by the Ottomans (see Pashas by J Mather)
The work of the great Braudel casts a long shadow over the field of Mediterranean studies. Abulafia's book is another interesting attempt but hardly a world shattering event.