The Mediterranean after Braudel and Horden–Purcell: Review article of W. V. Harris, ed., Rethinking the Mediterranean,

[First paragraph] This edited volume results from a conference held Columbia University in 2001 and contributes to studies of the ancient and Medieval history of Mediterranean region (3500 BC – AD 1500). In his introductory chapter, Harris outlines the linked concepts of ‘unity and distinctiveness’ that frame the volume’s major antecedents – Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II and his more recent Les Memoires de la Méditerranée, as well as Horden and Purcell’s The Corrupting Sea. Harris stresses the Eurocentric cultural imperialism which views this region as a cultural and ecology entity, and also as a climactic unity that differs from that of most western scholars’ origins. He emphasises the lack of contact and integration in the region prior to the Roman period, bringing into question the region’s boundaries and calling for a wider ethnographic comparison than that of the modern Mediterranean region. As he notes this can also apply to measuring the region’s environmental history, given its considerable deforestation since antiquity.