This book investigates how ideas of and discourses about Europe have been affected by images of the Mediterranean Sea and its many worlds from the nineteenth century onwards.
Surprisingly, modern scholars have often neglected such an influence and, in fact, in most histories of the idea of Europe the Mediterranean is conspicuously absent. This might partly be explained by the fact that historians have often identified Europe with modernity (and the Atlantic world) and, therefore, in opposition to the classical world (centred around the Mediterranean). This book will challenge such views, showing that a plethora of thinkers, from the early nineteenth century to the present, have refused to relegate the Mediterranean to the past. Importance is given to the idea of a distinct ‘meridian thought’, a notion first set forth by Albert Camus and now reworked by French and Italian thinkers. As most chapters argue, this might represent an important tool for rethinking the Mediterranean and, in turn, it might help us challenge received notions about European identity and rethink Europe as the locus of ‘modernity’.
Mediterranean Europe(s): Rethinking Europe from its Southern Shores will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in European studies and Mediterranean history.
1. The Saint-Simonian Vision of the Mediterranean Deborah Paci 2. The Port of Europe: Hegel’s Geophilosophy of History and the Spirit of the Sea Alessandro De Arcangelis 3. Mediterranean Imaginaries: Europe, Empire, and Islam in the Nineteenth Century Gavin Murray-Miller 4. Cradle, Frontier, and Contact: The Mediterranean in Geohistorical Narratives of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Felix Wiedemann 5.‘Europe from Afar’: A Poetic History of the Jewish Mediterranean Dario Miccoli 6. Max Weber in Southern Europe: The Problem with Work Roberto Dainotto 7. Europe or the Mediterranean? Paul Valéry and the French Debate of the 1930s Paola Cattani 8. ‘A Liquid Continent’: Alterity and Continuity between the Mediterranean Sea and Europe in Gabriel Audisio’s Interwar Works Miriam Begliuomini 9. Mare Nostrum and the European Polity: Fascist Italy and the Mediterranean Sea in European Civilisation Lucio Valent 10. Archipelago: Rethinking Europe from its Islands Sara Sermini 11. Mediterraneanising Europe? How a German Book and the Mediterranean Perspective Could Help us to Better Understand the EU and its Crisis Peter Pichler
Matthew D’Auria is Associate Professor of Modern European History at the University of East Anglia. Fernanda Gallo is Associate Professor of Nineteenth Century Mediterranean History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Homerton College
