Abstracts
Nick Doumanis
(University of New South Wales, Australia)
The Eastern Mediterranean in world history and la longue duree
The unity of the Mediterranean, its coherence as an historical subject, enjoys broad acceptance nowadays, but Braudel and other Mediterraneanists have never fully explained why it is that its eastern half served as its centre of gravity, at least until the modern period. Why was the great semi-circle, formed by Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia and the Balkans, the focus of wealth, urban culture and political power for most of that time? Taking a long diachronic perspective, this paper compares it to the other great hubs of Eurasian history (China, India), and explores why, despite its environmental limitations, it was the effective centre of western Eurasia. Preliminary investigation suggests the importance of la longue duree, and the fact that complex societies were established much earlier in this region, and that traditions of state formation, infrastructure and regional networking were sustained from the Bronze Age through to the Ottomans.
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