Introduction

Author(s):  
Andrew W. Devereux

This chapter examines the Spanish expansion into the Mediterranean basin during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as the monarchy sought to forge a multicontinental empire at the heart of the Old World. It talks about the fact that the early modern Spanish Empire is often thought of as an Atlantic empire, one that arose as a result of the Castilian colonies of the Caribbean and, later, the American mainland. It also provides a reminder that during the early decades of overseas expansion, Spain looked to the east as much as it did to the west. The chapter seeks to address historical discrepancies by analyzing arguments that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spaniards developed in order to justify acts of war and conquest in the context of the Mediterranean. It connects Spain's Mediterranean imperial project to its Atlantic corollary, reviewing the ways in which the Mediterranean experience sometimes informed and influenced Spanish arguments justifying war and conquest in the Americas.

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 234-243
Author(s):  
Om Alhana Muhammad Nasr MOHAMMED ◽  
Mabrouka Muhammad Al Ghanay HUSSEIN

Throughout the ages, the Mediterranean was considered a Roman lake, and historians and travelers have always considered it as such, and its name changed for them. Some of them called it the Roman Sea, while others called it the White Sea, and no one would have imagined that this Roman lake that Roman ships sailed in, and after that it was inherited by the Byzantines. It will become an Islamic lake, including Henry Perrin of England, followed by Christophe Picard, author of the book Bahr al-Khulafa '. The importance of this research lies in introducing the author of the book, Bahr al-Khulafa ', and highlighting the underlying reason for adhering to the theory that the Mediterranean is a Roman Sea, while the objectives of the research come to reveal the invalidity of the theory that historians adhere to the West, which says that trade in the Mediterranean will collapse with the entry of Muslims into it. The most prominent results of the research were the finding that Picard is only one of the Orientalists, who despite his presence in the countries of the East and his calls that he is an Arabist, not an Orientalist, was unable to deny the accusation of Muslims of piracy in the Mediterranean. The two researchers adopted the historical narrative approach with comparison and analysis whenever the need arises


Author(s):  
Necati Polat

This chapter looks critically into the exhortations in recent peace thinking to accommodate visions of peace outside European modernity, called the West. The discussion problematizes the premise of a radical distinction in cultural terms between the West and the non-West, questioning for each front the notion of a linear cultural transmission from ancient times onward. The binary, the chapter argues, is premised effectively on an oblivion of hybridities, especially in the Mediterranean basin, already before modernity and, later, under modernity, of the virtual recasting of much of what has been out there in the periphery, however named or classified, in the image of modernity. The chapter then considers some of the characteristic oversimplifications in peace research around the theme, which, albeit with a strong anti-ethnocentric posture to begin with, end up largely reproducing the classical Orientalism in its reductionisms.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 9975-10024
Author(s):  
P. Ricaud ◽  
B. Sič ◽  
L. El Amraoui ◽  
J.-L. Attié ◽  
P. Huszar ◽  
...  

Abstract. The space and time variabilities of methane (CH4) total column and upper tropospheric mixing ratios are analyzed above the Mediterranean Basin (MB) as part of the Chemical and Aerosol Mediterranean Experiment (ChArMEx) programme. Spaceborne measurements from the Thermal And Near infrared Sensor for carbon Observations-Fourier Transform Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS) instrument on the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) satellite, the Atmospheric InfraRed Spectrometer (AIRS) on the AURA platform and the Infrared Atmospheric Sounder Interferometer (IASI) instrument aboard the MetOp-A platform are used in conjunction with model results from the Chemical Transport Model (CTM) MOCAGE, and the Chemical Climate Models (CCMs) CNRM-AOCCM and LMDz-OR-INCA (according to different emission scenarios). In order to minimize systematic errors in the spaceborne measurements, we have only considered maritime pixels over the MB. The period under interest spans from 2008 to 2011 considering satellite and MOCAGE data and, regarding the CCMs, from 2001 to 2010. An East-West gradient in CH4 is observed and modelled whatever the season considered. In winter, air masses mainly originating from Atlantic Ocean and Europe tend to favour an elevated amount of mid-to-upper tropospheric CH4 in the West vs. the East of the MB, with a general upward transport above the MB. In summer, the meteorological state of the MB is changed, favouring air from Northern Africa and Middle East together with Atlantic Ocean and Europe, with a general downward motion above the MB. The Asian Monsoon traps and uplifts high amounts of CH4 that are transported towards North Africa and Middle East by the Asian Monsoon Anticyclone to finally reach and descent in the East of the MB. Consequently, the mid-to-upper tropospheric CH4 is much greater in the East than in the West of the MB. The seasonal variation of the difference in CH4 between the East and the West MB does show a maximum in summer for pressures from 500 to 100 hPa considering both spaceborne measurements and model results whatever the emission scenarios used. From this study, we can conclude that CH4 in the mid-to-upper troposphere over the MB is mainly affected by long-range transport, particularly intense in summer from Asia. In the low-to-mid troposphere, the local sources of emission in the vicinity of the MB mainly affect the CH4 variability.


2021 ◽  
pp. 122-155
Author(s):  
Michael Meere

This chapter investigates two ways in which playwrights adapt violent historical subjects for the stage in Gabriel Bounin’s Soltane (1561) and Jean de Beaubreuil’s tragedy Regulus (1582). The loyal heroes from both are victims of state violence, though their stories unfold quite differently. In La Soltane, Moustapha obeys his father’s orders to visit him despite being warned his father will have him killed. In Regulus, Atilie remains loyal to his homeland (Rome) despite knowing the Carthaginians will punish his betrayal. However, whereas Bounin depicts Moustapha as an innocent victim of filicide, Beaubreuil paints Atilie as an arrogant warrior whose hubris causes his defeat in battle. Nonetheless, Atilie accepts his change in fortune and his violent death in Carthage. Thus, despite his flaws, he is a stoic exemplar who might inspire spectators to take virtuous action themselves. Further, while the stories take place in the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean Basin, they mirror the religious and civil wars of sixteenth-century France.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (10) ◽  
pp. e1500561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward R. Cook ◽  
Richard Seager ◽  
Yochanan Kushnir ◽  
Keith R. Briffa ◽  
Ulf Büntgen ◽  
...  

Climate model projections suggest widespread drying in the Mediterranean Basin and wetting in Fennoscandia in the coming decades largely as a consequence of greenhouse gas forcing of climate. To place these and other “Old World” climate projections into historical perspective based on more complete estimates of natural hydroclimatic variability, we have developed the “Old World Drought Atlas” (OWDA), a set of year-to-year maps of tree-ring reconstructed summer wetness and dryness over Europe and the Mediterranean Basin during the Common Era. The OWDA matches historical accounts of severe drought and wetness with a spatial completeness not previously available. In addition, megadroughts reconstructed over north-central Europe in the 11th and mid-15th centuries reinforce other evidence from North America and Asia that droughts were more severe, extensive, and prolonged over Northern Hemisphere land areas before the 20th century, with an inadequate understanding of their causes. The OWDA provides new data to determine the causes of Old World drought and wetness and attribute past climate variability to forced and/or internal variability.


Author(s):  
Isabel Bartolomé Rodríguez ◽  
Manuel González-Mariscal

Abstract Fuelwood was the main domestic fuel in the Mediterranean Basin during the early modern age, although the consumption level was lower than in other latitudes. The calculation of annual real prices and per capita household consumption figures in Seville from 1518 to 1775 reveals a complex evolution connected to a European-wide scenario. As expected, low levels of domestic fuelwood use were maintained in accordance with climate and heating requirements, but contrary to prior assumptions, a substantial increase is evidenced as of 1630. The growing supply of firewood from tree-crops, leading to a decrease in real prices, ran parallel to an early diet shift to pulses and the corresponding extension of cooking times.


1976 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald C. Jennings

The rapid rise in the population of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century is well known. Ömer Lütfi Barkan long ago published a table showing that twelve important Ottoman cities grew from a combined population of 142,562 in 1520/1530 to a population of 271,494 in 1571/1580; likewise he has shown that the population of five major provinces in Anatolia grew 59.9 per cent in the same period, from 872,610 to 1,360,474. Fernand Braudel supports the thesis that there was a general 100 per cent population growth throughout the Mediterranean basin in the sixteenth century, and Barkan claims that growth at the Ottoman end of the Mediterranean was even more dynamic. However, there is still need for specialized studies of Ottoman population and its flux in the sixteenth century.


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