The Corrupting Sea

A Study of Mediterranean History
1. Auflage 2000
ISBN: 978-0-631-21890-6
Verlag: John Wiley and Sons Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 784 Seiten, Format (B × H): 170 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 1313 g

The Corrupting Sea is a history of the relationship between people and their environments in the Mediterranean region over some 3,000 years. It offers a novel analysis of this relationship in terms of microecologies and the often extensive networks to which they belong.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Purcell, Nicholas

Horden, Peregrine

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Maps vii

Acknowledgements ix

Note on References x

Abbreviations xi

Introduction 1

Part One: ‘Frogs round a Pond’: Ideas of the Mediterranean 7

I A Geographical Expression 9

1. What is the Mediterranean?;2. The Challenge of the Continents;3. The Mediterranean Disintegrated; 4. Intimations of Unity

II a Historian’s Mediterranean 26

1. The Imaginary Sea; 2. Four Men in a Boat; 3. The End of the Mediterranean; 4. Mediterranean History; 5. Historical Ecology

Part Two: ‘Short Distances and Definite Places’: Mediterranean Microecologies 51

III Four Definite Places 53

1. The Biqa; 2. South Etruria; 3. The Green Mountain, Cyrenaica; 4. Melos; 5. ‘La trame du monde’; 6. Mountains and Pastures; 7. Theodoric and Dante

IV Ecology and the Larger Settlement 89

1. An Urban Tradition; 2. Definitions; 3. The Urban Variable; 4. Types and Theories; 5. Consumption; 6. Settlement Ecology; 7. Autarky; 8. Dispersed Hinterlands

V Connectivity 123

1. Lines of Sound and Lines of Sight; 2. Extended Archipelagos; 3. Shipping Lanes; 4. Economies Compared; 5. The Early Medieval Depression; 6. Connectivity Maintained?; 7. Conclusion Copyrighted Material

Part Three: Revolution and Catastrophe 173

VI Imperatives of Survival: Diversify, Store, Redistribute 175

1. The History of Mediterranean Food Systems; 2. The New Ecological Economic History; 3. Understanding the Marginal; 4. The Integrated Mediterranean Forest; 5. The Underestimated Mediterranean Wetland; 6. ‘These Places Feed Many Pickling-Fish.’; 7. Mediterranean Animal Husbandry; 8. Cereals and the Dry Margin; 9. The Case of the Tree-Crop; 10. The Mediterranean Garden; 11. The Smaller Mediterranean Island

VII Technology and Agrarian Change 231

1. Working the Soil; 2. The Irrigated Landscape; 3. On the Diversity of Cultivated Plants; 4. Abatement and Intensification; 5. Anatomy of the Mediterranean Countryman; 6. Colonizations and Allotments; 7. The Reception of Innovation

VIII Mediterranean Catastrophes 298

1. On the History of Catastrophe; 2. An Unstable World; 3. Alluvial Catastrophe and its Causes; 4. Sediments and History; 5. The History of Vegetation; 6. Environmental History without Catastrophe

IX Mobility of Goods and People 342

1. Inescapable Redistribution; 2. Animal, Vegetable and; 3. The Problem of Mediterranean Textiles; 4. Problems with High Commerce; 5. The Ultimate Resource; 6. Organized Mobility; 7. Places of Redistribution

Part Four: The Geography of Religion 401

X ‘territories of Grace’ 403

1. Religion and the Physical Environment; 2. A Perilous Environment; 3. The Sacralized Economy; 4. The Religion of Mobility; 5. The Religion of Boundary and Belonging

Part Five: ‘Museums of Man’? The Uses of Social Anthropology 461

XI ‘mists of Time’: Anthropology and Continuity 463

1. Survivals Revisited; 2. Balanced Arcadias; 3. The Presence of the Past; 4. Upstreaming

XII ‘i also Have a Moustache’: Anthropology and

Mediterranean Unity 485

1. Grands faits méditerranéens?; 2. Mediterranean Values?; 3. Honour and Shame I; 4. Honour and Shame II; 5. Honour in the City; 6. Pattern and Depth; 7. Distinctiveness; 8. Origins; 9. History; 10. The Case for Mediterraneanism

Bibliographical Essays 530

Consolidated Bibliography 642

Index 737

Über Autor(innen)

Peregrine Horden is Wellcome Trust Research Lecturer in the History of Medicine, Royal Holloway, University of London. Nicholas Purcell is Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History, St John's College, Oxford. They began studying Mediterranean history when both were Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.