The Mediterranean in the Ancient World by Fernand Braudel (PDF)

Description

This general reader’s history of the ancient mediterranean combines a thorough grasp of the scholarship of the day with an great historian’s gift for imaginative reconstruction and inspired analogy. Extensive notes allow the reader to appreciate thestate of scholarship at the time of writing, the scale and breadth of Braudel’s learning and the points where orthodoxy has changed, sometimes vindicating Braudel, sometimes proving him wrong. Above all the book offers us the chance to situate Braudel’s mediterranean, born of a lifetime’s love and knowledge, more clearly in the climates of the sea’s history.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Have not completed reading this great book. So far, nothing but the best.

⭐I just wanted to inform all that this book and another titled ‘Memory and the Mediterranean’ by the same author are one and the same book. I do not know why it is available under two different titles.

⭐Anything from Braudel is “five star”

⭐Braudel is an amazing historian, but this book is marred by puzzling and unhelpful mistakes, esp. In the dates. Like ‘zoo’ which i’m Guessing is 200. I can’t believe the editors did not have the text proofread. These errors are all over the text, not just once or twice.

⭐Fernand Braudel has been described by many as one of Europe’s greatest historians of the 20th century (Dr. Oswyn Murray goes to greater lengths in his introduction when he states that he was not one of the greats, but ‘..the greatest historian of the twentieth century’).The subject he chose for this book is big; The history of the entire Mediterranean area virtually from the beginning of time. To the credit of the author, he structures the book beautifully and using his comprehensive literal skills guides the reader easily through many thousands of years of the history of the Mediterranean area.If, in my opinion, the real historical analysis begins with chapter 3 (The beginning: Mesopotamia and Egypt) that is only because of my narrow perception and small knowledge of the history of the prehistorical period -so to speak.After the third chapter Braudel takes us through the three millennia (or so) of the ancient history of the Mare Nostrum, always keeping the excellent flow of text and structure, but by covering so much time and space in less than three hundred pages he has to omit (understandably, perhaps) from his book some areas and cultures around the Mediterranean that one would have liked to see in the book. The omitted cultures are mainly those that are from the lesser known areas of the sea, the nomadic cultures of Marocco and Libya (before Rome) etc. One could say that because of lack of space, Braudel has to limit his history to those cultures (and areas) that influenced the whole of the Mediterranean area (Egyptians, Carthaginians, Greeks etc.).Also, because of limited space, the author cannot go into any lengths about his various subjects. The subchapters ‘The impact of maritime trade’ [in the colonization period] and ‘Carthage and Africa’ (the relation of Carthage with the tribes of the African hinterland) are only 2 pages in length and the chapter about the Punic wars ‘Rome versus Carthage: the war for mastery of the Mediterranean’ is ten pages, but could arguably be worth a book or two in itself.In short, the book is a great and sweeping narrative of the area and people that lived and died there, influencing every period thereafter. The book is a masterpiece in structure and (hist)storytelling (one is tempted to say ‘short-(hist)storytelling’) and therein lies its’ weakness -it will only inform the reader briefly about almost everything that it encompasses. But there -maybe- lies the brilliance; combining a wast subject and long history in such a short space.

⭐I’m commenting specifically on the OCR production of the Kindle version here, which is frankly pretty dire, obviously without any human input. French terms in particular are mangled. In the long Introduction the name of the journal that served as the main vehicle for Braudel’s theoretical thought appears consistenly as ‘Annates’ (it was of course ‘Annales’. ‘Longue duree’ appears as ‘tongue durie’ and ‘Uong duree’. And so on. One mustn’t get this out of perspective: it’s a persistent irritant, but most historians or informed civilians will know what’s mean. But it sloppy in a work by such a towering figure. Perhaps Braudel is less highly regarded these days, and it wouldn’t happen in a work by Niall Ferguson.

⭐Excellent translation of the fascinating book by Braudel. An extraordinary travel across the centuries and many stimulating insights on the history and development of the human race. A must for anybody who questions who are we, and where do we come from.

⭐Fascinating story and told in an easy to read way.

⭐Powerful book, Braunfels ground breaking work leads straight to Diamonds Guns Germs and Steel. Geography tells us how and why we got to here and now.

⭐Ein Klassiker, wenn nicht eines der besten Bücher für die GeschichtswissenschaftF. Braudel betrachtet die geschichtliche Entwicklung des Mittelmeerraumes in allen Details.

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