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A Comparative History of the Modern Mediterranean

Bibliographic Data

ID21222209
AuthorsEdmund Burke (0000-0003-0712-4762, University of California, Santa Cruz, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume46
Issue1
Pages47-53
Publication date2012-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReview of Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2151-3481 • E-ISSN: 2329-3225
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s2151348100002986
OpenAlexW2587717155
LanguageEN
References cited12

There is something seriously flawed about models of social change that posit the dominant role of in-built civilizational motors. While “the rise of the West” makes great ideology, it is poor history. Like Jared Diamond, I believe that we need to situate the fate of nations in a long-term ecohistorical context. Unlike Diamond, I believe that the ways (and the sequences) in which things happened mattered deeply to what came next. The Mediterranean is a particularly useful case in this light. No longer a center of progress after the sixteenth century, the decline of the Mediterranean is usually ascribed to its inherent cultural deficiencies. While the specific cultural infirmity varies with the historian (amoral familism, patron/clientalism, and religion are some of the favorites) its civilizationalist presuppositions are clear. In this respect the search for “what went wrong” typifies national histories across the region and prefigures the fate of the Third World

Archaeology · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Presupposition · Sociology · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy

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