The Concept of the Mediterranean moulded by the Humanities in France
Introduction
The Concept of the Mediterranean moulded by the Humanities in France,
from Elisée Reclus to Fernand Braudel (19th - 20th century)
In recent years the Mediterranean has been studied by academics as an intangible “concept”[1] rather than as a natural, geographical entity. How we imagine this space we call “Mediterranean” is now at least as important as the reality, whose contours anyway are not always agreed upon, sometimes a “sea”, sometimes a “continent”.[2] In fact, the word “Mediterranean” has not always existed: as the historian Anne Ruel has shown, it comes from the adjective “mediterranean”[3] which first appeared in the sixteenth century and was used only to describe indistinctly, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau did in 1762, “that which is surrounded by land and separates continents”.[4] In 1769, the naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon even made a list of a whole range of mediterranean seas in the world.[5]
[1] See « Débat sur le concept de Méditerranée » in L’Espace géographique, tome 24, n°3, 1995, pp.209-222.
[2] Robert Ilbert, « Méditerranée : mer ou continent ? » ; interview for the magazine Terres Marines, n° 4, 1992.
[3] See Anne Ruel, « L’Invention de la Méditerranée », in Vingtième Siècle, n°32, October-December 1991. pp. 7-14. In 1708, Thomas Corneille's Dictionnaire universel, géographique et historique presents as a Méditerranée the “sea which begins at the Straits of Gibraltar and which stretches more than a thousand leagues up to the Kingdom of Syria [...] It was given the name Méditerranée, because being in the middle of all the lands of the Ancient World, it divides them in three parts, which are Europe, Asia, Africa.”
[4] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile ou de l’éducation, Francfort, 1762, volume 4.
[5] Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Histoire naturelle, preuve de la théorie sur la terre, Paris, imprimerie nationale, 1769, volume 2.
Introduction
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
Conclusion
Bibliography
Abstract
In recent years the Mediterranean has been studied by academics as an intangible “concept” rather than as a natural, geographical entity. How we imagine this space we call “Mediterranean” is now at least as important as the reality, whose contours anyway are not always agreed upon, sometimes a “sea”, sometimes a “continent”. In fact, the word “Mediterranean” has not always existed: as the historian Anne Ruel has shown, it comes from the adjective “mediterranean” which first appeared in the sixteenth century and was used only to describe indistinctly, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau did in 1762, “that which is surrounded by land and separates continents”. In 1769, the naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon even made a list of a whole range of mediterranean seas in the world. ...
Author
Gastaut YVAN
Lecturer in contemporary history, University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, URMIS