The Mediterranean and ‘The New Thalassology’

The Mediterranean has some claim to be the great original of seas as the subject of history. The world created by medieval Iberian navigators around the islands of the eastern Atlantic, in the period preceding that for which a ‘full’ Atlantic history is conceivable, is the ‘Atlantic Mediterranean’ or ‘Mediterranean Atlantic’. The ‘original’ Mediterranean is in fact more problematic as a component in the new regional history than its illustrious forebears might suggest. Evading the problem of geographical characterisation allows ‘the Mediterranean’ to flourish as a flag of convenience. The unity and distinctiveness of the Mediterranean should be differently conceived. The microecological approach also gives us a way of delimiting the Mediterranean— of avoiding delimiting it in any fixed, ‘timeless’ way. The unity and distinctiveness of the Mediterranean should be differently conceived. The definition of the Mediterranean as a region was not, therefore, a by-product or concomitant of ancient imperialism.