The waning of the Mediterranean, 1550-1870 : a geohistorical approach
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The waning of the Mediterranean, 1550-1870 : a geohistorical approach
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
Available at 3 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [369]-415) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Conventional scholarship on the Mediterranean portrays the Inner Sea as a timeless entity with unchanging ecological and agrarian features. But, Faruk Tabak argues, some of the "traditional" and "olden" characteristics that we attribute to it today are actually products of relatively recent developments. Locating the shifting fortunes of Mediterranean city-states and empires in patterns of long-term economic and ecological change, this study shows how the quintessential properties of the basin-the trinity of cereals, tree crops, and small livestock-were reestablished as the Mediterranean's importance in global commerce, agriculture, and politics waned. Tabak narrates this history not from the vantage point of colossal empires, but from that of the mercantile republics that played a pivotal role as empire-building city-states. His unique juxtaposition of analyses of world economic developments that flowed from the decline of these city-states and the ecological change associated with the Little Ice Age depicts large-scale, long-term social change.
Integrating the story of the western and eastern Mediterranean-from Genoa and the Habsburg empire to Venice and the Ottoman and Byzantine empires-Tabak unveils the complex process of devolution and regeneration that brought about the eclipse of the Mediterranean.
Table of Contents
Acknowlegments
Introduction: Unrelieved Weight of Wealth in the Inner Sea
Part I: Of Cities of Saints and Rich Trades
1. Empires and Empire-Building City-States
2. City-States and the Inner Sea
3. Eclipse of the City-States and the Resurfacing of the Mediterranean
Part II: Of Malarial Plains and Arboreal Hills
4. Reversal in the Fortunes of the Plains
5. New World of the Hills
Conclusion: The Mediterranean between the Leek-Green Sea and the Green Sea
Notes
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"