The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean by David Abulafia

Jul 10, 2012 Marks54 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a "human" history of the Mediterranean Sea, from over 10,000 years ago to 2010. I saw that this had received a favorable review in the Economist so I got a copy, but was hesitant to plunge in - it is a rather long volume. I started it last Friday and could not put it down! It tells a coherent and entertaining story of five different seas that seems on target, provides a believable overall narrative, and yet includes all sorts of tidbits about people, places, and odd facts that makes book...more This is a "human" history of the Mediterranean Sea, from over 10,000 years ago to 2010. I saw that this had received a favorable review in the Economist so I got a copy, but was hesitant to plunge in - it is a rather long volume. I started it last Friday and could not put it down! It tells a coherent and entertaining story of five different seas that seems on target, provides a believable overall narrative, and yet includes all sorts of tidbits about people, places, and odd facts that makes books like this so rewarding.

My biggest concern was that this would be a huge survey that did not hold together well - a sort of mega cliffs notes. It is a survey, but the whole is much more than the parts. For example, I learned much more about the rise of Spain to eventual European dominance in conflict with France, the Italian commercial republics, and the Ottoman Empire. For another example, the author did a good job in showing how the maritime life of the Mediterranean was important in how countries developed -- such as why Northern Italy prospered and moved into manufacturing and high value added enterprises while Southern Italy did not. The role of merchants, pirates, and intellectual wanderers are well developed to show how they made the Mediterranean into an integrated area rather than just an array of kingdoms and states.

While the author is very learned, he is also very wise and strikes a good balance between detail and general themes. Nearly every section of the book has links to an entire scholarly community with its own issues and debates. The book tends to offer the main line story in each area while at the same time indicating to readers where disagreements exist. On the areas where I was better informed, it was very clear how Abulafia was crafting this story and he does a fine job.

Don't try to speed read it and have some maps (and google) handy to check up on the wealth of details that you will encounter here. I thought it was very rewarding and the greatest proof of this was that the book held my attention once I started. I did not have to worry about getting sufficiently far in the book so that I would finish. That took care of itself.TT(less)

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Mar 14, 2013 John rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found "The Great Sea" to be an extremely enjoyable and informative book. The goal of the author, a professor at the University of Cambridge, is to trace the history of the Mediterranean Sea in terms of its periodic rises, declines, and re-organizations as "a single commercial, cultural and even (under the Romans) political zone." Specifically, David Abulafia divides the history of the Mediterranean into five periods: prehistoric, classical, medieval, great powers, and modern. The author's inte...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Alex Telander rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Mediterranean Sea has been there for a very long time. Over the millennia it has shrunken and grown, given birth to islands, then drowned then, then birthed them once again; at one point it was even a dried-up seabed for a little while until the Atlantic began pouring into it once more, filling it up like a bathtub. Humanity has also played an important part with the Mediterranean; without it our history would be very different. From the days of the Neolithic people, to the ancient Egyptians...more

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Mar 02, 2012 Joan added it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-couldn-t-finish, nonfiction

I have enough books waiting to be read that it is really going to have to seem remarkable for me to read a 600+ book. This one failed for a number of reasons. I found his explanation of why he insisted on using BC and AD weak. He clearly just prefers that usage. But that was minor. What really ended the book for me was the following:
After explaining that he wasn't going to include Ancient Egypt because they really weren't interested in the outside world, including the Mediterranean, he then proc...more

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Nov 24, 2011 Loring Wirbel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Capturing a new and unique slice of history in an uncommon analysis is a legitimate task in its own right, and Abulafia has done a worthy job of skipping over 25,000 years of humans in the Mediterranean, in a work condensed to 650 pages. His result is readable and intriguing enough to almost warrant five stars for the book, though there are a few problems that may be inherent in an ambition this large. His decision to segregate the historical periods into five discrete Mediterraneans makes sens...more Capturing a new and unique slice of history in an uncommon analysis is a legitimate task in its own right, and Abulafia has done a worthy job of skipping over 25,000 years of humans in the Mediterranean, in a work condensed to 650 pages. His result is readable and intriguing enough to almost warrant five stars for the book, though there are a few problems that may be inherent in an ambition this large. His decision to segregate the historical periods into five discrete Mediterraneans makes sense in retrospect, though it might throw the reader for a loop at first.

The obvious problem in the first section of the book is to weave together legends and archeological finds in a seamless and coherent way, to give the reader a feel of what the Phoenician traders may have been like, and ascertain who those mysterious sea raiders were that caused the first Aegean "dark ages" of the later Bronze Age period. Early chapters might occasionally get wrapped up in a search for pottery shards and burial plots, but it's not clear how Abulafia could have improved his narrative, short of accepting Trojan legends as an accurate guide to the early historical Mediterranean.

The other problem is the result of Abulafia's editors trying to keep the work to manageable length. As a result, there are important gaps in many of the stories. Since the book is not intended to give a history of the land wars of Northern Europe, it's obvious one won't find a mention herein of the Hundred Years' War or the War of the Roses, for example. But how could Abulafia fail to provide an account of the Islamic invasion of Spain, and the fall of Rodrigo of the Visigoths? How could Abulafia badmouth Charlemagne in so many different ways without discussing what parts of the Frankish king's relations with Islam and the Byzantine empire the author didn't like? The book might have had a more even flow if it had been extended to 800 or even 1000 pages.

Still, the tales it does tell are fabulous, and ones that are often neglected when histories are told from the perspective of British or French kings, the Holy Roman Empire and its Spanish successors, or any of the more traditional empires of Europe and the Middle East. Details of the histories of neglected islands such as the Balearics, Malta, Sicily, Crete, and Cyprus form the best parts of this book, and the city-states of the Adriatic are given good coverage - not just the well-known tales of Venice and the western Italian towns of Pisa and Genoa, but the lesser-known tales of Dubrovnik/Ragusa and other Dalmatian port cities. Particularly tragic is the story of how many port cities became less and less diverse and cosmopolitan in the 19th and 20th centuries, due to both expulsions from above and fear-based migration from below.

Abulafia keeps the spirit of the narrative churning right up to the final pages, where coverage of the post-crash years of 2008-10 provide a glimpse at the commoditization of tourism, the problems of illegal immigration from North Africa to Southern Europe, and the environmental crisis faced in the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, the book is not new enough to cover the Tunisian uprising and Arab Spring, the Greek financial crisis, or the revolt in Libya that morphed into a NATO bombing campaign. Despite being scarcely a year old, The Great Sea already begs for a second edition.

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Oct 06, 2011 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: librarybooks

‘For over three thousand years, the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the great centres of world civilisation.’

This book, the cover tells me, ‘is the first complete history of the Mediterranean from the erection of the mysterious temples on Malta around 3500 BC to the recent invention of the Mediterranean’s shores as a tourist destination’. I was immediately fascinated: how does a history of a sea read? People interact with the sea in a number of ways, but they don’t live on it. What facts becom...more

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Jun 30, 2012 James Kane rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Professor David Abulafia, one of the most respected and established historians of the Mediterranean world in the Middle Ages, concludes this hefty volume with the claim that "[the Mediterranean Sea] has played a role in the history of human civilization that has far surpassed any other expanse of sea". Although historians of other "expanses of sea" would no doubt vociferously defend the claims of their own subject in this respect (historians have a tendency to be territorial about such things),...more Professor David Abulafia, one of the most respected and established historians of the Mediterranean world in the Middle Ages, concludes this hefty volume with the claim that "[the Mediterranean Sea] has played a role in the history of human civilization that has far surpassed any other expanse of sea". Although historians of other "expanses of sea" would no doubt vociferously defend the claims of their own subject in this respect (historians have a tendency to be territorial about such things), Abulafia certainly supports his statement with a picture of great complexity that encapsulates just how busy and influential an expanse the Mediterranean has been for thousands of years. True to its title, The Great Sea really is a "human" history of the Mediterranean, full of fascinating details and entertaining anecdotes about the cultural, religious, commercial, intellectual, political and military activities of countless people over the centuries. Warriors, traders, slaves, merchants, philosophers, crusaders, preachers, sailors and ambassadors all play a part in this sweeping story. Abulafia's almost panoptic account of the Mediterranean from 22,000 BC down to the present day is bewildering in the breadth of its content, and at times it suffers from the inherent difficulty presented by any diachronic narrative so vast in its geographical remit. While the range of detail impresses and informs, it inevitably dilutes the focus of the history and frustrates the author's attempts to evoke discernible main themes. This might not be such a bad thing, though. Life, we all know too well, is messy, and the developments of history rarely (if ever) play out along the clean lines that so many books would have us believe are the norm. Whatever the future of the Mediterranean Sea - and as this book makes clear, its influence is undoubtedly in decline in many ways - Abulafia has produced a detailed and readable overview of the region's colourful past, covering its joys and its tragedies, its achievements and its failures, its happy periods of tolerance and its nadirs of violence and persecution. Some scholars may lament the generic nature of the work, but non-specialists with an interest in Mediterranean history will find this a valuable addition to their shelves.(less)

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Oct 30, 2011 Josh Hamacher rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

This massive tome details the history of the Mediterranean sea, starting with the first known inhabitants and going right up to 2010. Given the length of the book and the scope of the subject it's remarkably readable. Abulafia has an impressive ability to turn what could be a dry account of facts into a page-turner (at least by the standards of history books).

The focus is on larger societal trends and changes, the interactions between the peoples, cities, and nations surrounding the Mediterranea...more

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Nov 28, 2011 Riet rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Voor dit boek is wel uithoudingsvermogen vereist. Maar het is wel een heel goede, uitgebreide geschiedenis van de Middellandse Zee. En deze schrijver beperkt zich echt tot de zee en het gebied net aan de rand en daarin neemt hij dan de steden Venetie, Alexandrie, Saloniki, Smyrna, Genua, Livorno en nog veel meer mee. Hij beschrijft 5 periodes en dat loopt dan van de tijd voor Homerus tot aan de huidige Griekse crisis. Over dat laatste heeft hij gelukkig niet zo veel te melden. Interessant zijn d...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Jared rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Very impressive in its breadth, and surprisingly engaging for such a long book. He, like anyone else studying a topic as broad and deep as the Mediterranean, acknowledges his deep debt to Braudel. Nonetheless, Abulafia seeks to dismantle Braudel's longue durée view of the Mediterranean as relatively stable with a view of the societies surrounding the sea as constantly changing, divided broadly into five different "Mediterraneans" over time. I think he is largely successful in his task; at the ve...more

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Jul 09, 2012 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I must confess that I did not read every page; it was just too much. It was, however, a very impressive story that I will likely go back to on occasion if only to marvel at the fact that anyone is left alive after the repeated sacking, enslaving, and murder of everyone on the losing side of the battles. Accepting the degree of "certainty" displayed by the author as he cites precise population, casualty, economic, and trade statistics requires one to suspend skepticism a bit, but it may be that t...more

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May 14, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: arts-and-historical

Situated at the intersection of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Mediterranean Sea has been for millenia the place where religions, economies, and political systems met, clashed, influenced and absorbed one another. David Abulafia offers a fresh perspective by focusing on the sea itself: its practical importance for transport and sustenance; its dynamic role in the rise and fall of empires; and the remarkable cast of characters--sailors, merchants, migrants, pirates, pilgrims--who have crossed and...more

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Apr 26, 2013 Rindis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

After reading Norwich's A History of Venice Venice, I looked at his other books, and saw one on the Mediterranean that looked interesting. However, most of the reviews for it said it was okay, but Abulafia's The Great Sea was much better, so I put that on my wishlist instead, and got it for Christmas.

It's a large, expansive, book, covering from prehistory to the current day (2010). Abulafia purposefully tries to limit the scope of his book by sticking to subjects that impinge directly on the Med...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

The snippet that convinced me to buy this book said "If you are looking for one history book to read this summer, this is it". I suppose they meant that because it's quite dense and really more of a text book than light read for the beach (not that I thought it was a light read, but I wasn't aware of its full depths). That said, I quite enjoyed it, even if the huge history of the Mediterranean means that at times it felt like a list of trading manifests, ships, and battles.
It does presume a hig...more

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Jun 07, 2012 Patricia_Bjaaland rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Superb, superb, superb. A keeper for the rest of my life, a book I will dip in and out of, I am certain, many many times before I lay my final research project or book aside. I am an Asia historian but one can not escape the importance of Mediterranean Europe upon Asian history and culture, hence the value of this work that systematically goes into each of the great ages of the Mediterranean, its peoples, its cultures, its wars, its injustices, its epidemics, its destinies.

This is not to say th...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Tamara added it · review of another edition

Shelves: sea, europe, middle-east, africa, asia, history, non-fiction, geography, author-male

Good grief finally done. This really, really long. I was desperately checking how many pages I had left already by page 600 or so.

It's not entirely terrible - theres lots of interesting episodes, anecdotes and details that are fun. Ocassionally, theres even a whole few pages of coherent information about something that I actually understand - technology, language, trade, physical conditions of slaves, etc. This is actual stuff about actual stuff, and I find it interesting.

The problem is that i...more Good grief finally done. This really, really long. I was desperately checking how many pages I had left already by page 600 or so.

It's not entirely terrible - theres lots of interesting episodes, anecdotes and details that are fun. Ocassionally, theres even a whole few pages of coherent information about something that I actually understand - technology, language, trade, physical conditions of slaves, etc. This is actual stuff about actual stuff, and I find it interesting.

The problem is that it's interspersed amongst hundreds and hundreds of pages of "so in this period the ascendant Valencians moved against Syracuse, which contributed to the decline of Alexandria and blah blah blah." WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? Is there some sort of history-writing code which I have missed the memo on? Did they steal their boats? Burn their city? Send them stiff letters? What? I just have no interest whatsoever in this kind of geopolitics recap of a thousand years ago - not as any kind of normative statement, it just bores me. It doesn't mean anything to me, as a modern reader, whether Genoa or Carthage is ascendant at a given moment in the 1100's or what.

So theres lots of that, and it never really added up for me into a coherent history or sweeping sense of history for the region - it's too big and too dense. Which is ok, I don't think it had to, but the book is kind of stuck in limbo of being both too big and not big enough.

Then theres the sort-of-political sort-of-nostalgia stuff, which i'm probably exagerrating, but hey, it's my review and I can see political bugbears if I want to. Everything is political after all. Yes, yes, we get it, the place was just lovely in all those simply lovely port cities which were so diverse and cosmopolitan and where all those Greeks and Turks and Jews and Arabs and Albanians and Everyone got along so well (and were especially lovely to their neighbours during the race riots, in one memorable paragraph that Abulafia appears to have genuinely missed the irony of completely) and how awful that it all stopped with all that sad ugly nationalism business. It seems to me that this so much classist tripe that is a manufactured nostalgia of second generation post-exiles of westernized, wealthy elites, but what do I know?

Anyway, not really recommended. Too big and disjointed to be all that interesting.
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Dec 05, 2011 Bonnie_blu rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

This is a magnificently written, remarkable, view changing book. It is impossible to write a thorough review of this 600+ page book (not to mention the over 100 pages of notes/references) that covers the history of the Mediterranean Sea from before written history to the present day. However, let me say that Abulafia does an absolutely astounding job of relating this history without pre-conceived notions or prejudice. The book is highly readable and an eye-opening joy. Simply by reporting on the...more

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Mar 10, 2012 Fred Gorrell rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history-geography, nonfiction

This is a book that could be a valuable reference resource to someone working on a college research project. It covers the history of the Mediterranean from the first recorded instances of human travel through modern times, in exhaustive detail. The author, a Cambridge professor, references diligently; that section at the back of this book is longer than many published works. Great pains are taken to avoid drifting from the subject at hand -- the Sea, those who traveled on it, and the ports at i...more This is a book that could be a valuable reference resource to someone working on a college research project. It covers the history of the Mediterranean from the first recorded instances of human travel through modern times, in exhaustive detail. The author, a Cambridge professor, references diligently; that section at the back of this book is longer than many published works. Great pains are taken to avoid drifting from the subject at hand -- the Sea, those who traveled on it, and the ports at its edges -- into tangential discussions of the histories and events of inland regions or cultures. If this constraint had not been imposed, the book would have been published in volumes and might have been too large a project for anyone to write or read. That said, a companion volume to cross-reference those inland details would be nice, or perhaps some lengthy sidebars, since the discussions in this book that referenced inland events made clear how critical these were to the topics at hand. I am now well aware how much I don't know about key periods of Eurasian political history.

Hoping to gain some perspective on this fascinating part of the world primarily for the purpose of enriching my enjoyment of future vacations there, the book represented a large investment of time for the return achieved. The author describes different eras for the Sea, with an emphasis on political control, human migration, war, and to some extent, the impact of technological advances, particularly in relation to boat building. After a few millennia, keeping track of who migrated where and how control of places went from one sovereign to another, started to feel like reading a golf card. I almost abandoned the book, but there were some broad ideas emerging, and these kept me going. Foremost among these is a recognition of the importance of the islands of Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Sardinia, and Majorca and the essential role they played in controlling travel on the Sea. Other ideas, many of which align with universal themes of study in civilization and human migration, were also intriguing.

I often read books published by journalists who have combined original reporting with exhaustive reading of related academic works. My appreciation of the value these journalists add has been enhanced by going directly to this academic source. Journalist-authors like Mary Roach, Malcolm Gladwell, Erik Larson, Jonah Lehrer, or Tina Rosenberg are able to align their writing with key ideas and distill references to a broad range of academic work, without being constrained by conventions academic authors embrace.

Research is traditionally documented in academic papers that include, in summarizing material, recommendations for extension of the work published. In that spirit, there are a number of more readily digestible, thematic books suggested by this great tome; I will be an enthusiastic audience if any are ever published. These might address themes that emerged from this book, some of which were nicely summarized in the last few pages by Professor Abulafia:

1- The dialectic between cultural homogeneity and the spirit of convivencia endured throughout this region and it continues to shape events today. Even without the physical arrangements in port cities that served as the forebears for more modern ghettos, people who migrate tend to cluster, and receiving cultures tend to resist. Yet, there is enthusiasm for convivencia among some, and there seems to be evidence suggesting it fosters accelerated economic growth. Should we seek ways to sell the value of convivencia?
2- Ethnic "purity" in this region is more myth than fact, given the migrations of earlier millennia. Yet, theories about the predisposition of people in certain cultures to evidence specific strengths or biases is compelling (see Outliers: The Story of Success). What are the biological and sociological foundations for this? How does this interact with the dialectic described above?
3- Whether on land or sea, technological enhancement led to shrinking and homogenization. These trends are still present today and they are accelerating. Can we learn from history in order to bend the trajectory of this process to address resource limitations and cultural friction?
4- The period most of us in western cultures have been taught to think of as the Dark Ages, may be more accurately perceived as a time when the seat of culture shifted to the east, as Papal patronage moved from Rome to Constantinople. How can we avoid ignoring or marginalizing the progress achieved in diverse cultures?
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May 18, 2012 Kristin Gleeson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is not a book to be undertaken lightly. It's also not something you can really dip into on occasion. I read this in great chunks but gave it breaks because the detail is so overwhelming. The story of a sea that has been washing up along shores and filling lagoons and bearing all kinds of vessels for thousands of years is not going to be a short read.

Abulafia takes an expansive approach in examining the effects the Mediterranean had on various cultures and races, how its mere existence prov...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Beverly added it · review of another edition

This is a detailed account of the various Mediterranean peoples/countries from earliest times to modern day. I was unfamiliar with some of the general history of the area, it was difficult to comprehend the entire story. Still I came away with a greater knowledge of the area and commend the author for his in-depth work.

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Sep 19, 2012 Salam rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The scope of this book sometimes works against it. It's so darned long. My principal criticism is that the author (or at least this reader) sometimes gets "lost in the trees" of names of people and places, so many as to overwhelm, and obscure consideration of the larger historical trends (currents if you will) that make the book valuable as history. Homestly, I ran out of time on my library loan and couldn't finish its 600+ pages; maybe I'll check it out again... Just to see what happens after t...more

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Apr 26, 2013 Raul rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Enjoyed every page of it. Easy to read and full of interesting facts about the struggles between Christianity and Islamism in this area and period. Now the war still goes on and out to America, presently executed by extremist Islamists who desire nothing less than to stamp out Christianity and Western civilization and impose their religion. Quite a mouthful, isn't it? This perception is either true or it isn't, take your pick.

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Jun 11, 2012 James rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Without any deep knowledge of most of the issues discussed in this book, I'm not in a position to review it from an academic standpoint but I can say that is was a pleasure to read, managing to convey a lot of information while keeping to overall sense of telling a story.

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Jul 16, 2012 Craig Suchanec rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Interesting and comprehensive. There seem to be parts of history that the author is more interested in and therefore his writing improves and it becomes more interesting. Some of the chapters especially during the third and fourth Mediterranean sections can feel like the listing of names and places without really deep connection. The scope of this is great and it covers things well considering the lofty goal.

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Aug 06, 2012 Darren rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Abulafia argues the Mediterranean has been "probably the most vigorous place of interaction between different societies on the face of this planet," and after the reading The Great Sea it's hard to disagree. I love this sort of very broad sweep of history type of books and The Great Sea is one of the best I've read. Abulafia writes well, he doesn't talk down to the reader despite an immense breadth and depth of learning and on the whole it's a satisfying read although somewhat dense. It's not so...more

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Jan 13, 2012 Harry rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A very big book dealing thoroughly with the peoples and cultures of the Mediterranean sea. For me, it connected Greek, Roman and Carthaginian cultures and the spread of Christianity and Islam across the Mediterranean basin.

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Dec 20, 2011 Mary Kristine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book received excellent reviews but let me warn you: It is a text book!! It reads well but there is so much history to digest that it can only be read in sections. It took me over 4 weeks to finish this book. My copy is filled with underlines and notes and questions. Oh, but I learned so much. Saddly though, I am sure I have forgotten even more. I was never bored but I felt I needed a college class to discuss the extraordinary amount of information (heaven forbid, even tests) to help me ret...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Michelle LaMay rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I kept turning the pages...after the fourth century, I recognized many family names...the one thing that seldom changed was the sea and its climate and human history is adapting to it (or not) as evidenced by the wrecks from which the "history" is written.

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Oct 27, 2012 Jeanne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an excellent book--LONG! But I "learned" a lot of things I already "knew" piecemeal. Hearing bits and pieces turned into a narrative was marvelous.

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Aug 05, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A truly excellent history of the peoples of the Mediterranean with all their complex diversity of beliefs and practices. At once an encyclopedic survey and an historical analysis that makes the reader think long and hard about concepts such as belief, trade, nationalism and the nation-state. This is book both provocative and strangely reassuring and full of characters and stories who one never meets in English history, and as such, leads one to reassess ideas about the cradle of civilisation. Th...more

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