Customer Reviews

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, Vol. 1

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the 1500s, billions in gold and silver poured into Spanish coffers from the new world; yet, a century later Spain was bankrupt. What happened? Fernand Braudel has woven together a fascinating tour around the Mediterranean of the 1500s, explaining the rise of the Ottoman Empire, how Egyptians made iced drinks, why Algiers became the capital of piracy, how the banking system created the first transcontinental roads, and much more. This book immerses the reader in a new world full of rich details and suprising connections. Spain? An extravagant Star-Wars size naval fleet built with timbers imported from Scandinavia; nonexistent accounting practices, the personal greed of Spanish nobility helped along by canny bankers in the Netherlands--the wealth poured out as fast as it had come.

I have been keenly interested in world history for nearly 20 years. I read, on average, 30 non-fiction historical accounts per annum. With rare exception, I have always felt up to the task of both completion and comprehension. Braudel is an entirely different animal. What Braudel has presented in the form of 16th-century Mediterranean history is formidable, innovative, and exhausting.

Braudel's narrative weaves itself through overlays of historical strata that demand as much from the reader as any contemporary written history available. His is not a mere linear schedule of cause and effect, but a finely crafted history of regional parallels which render the methodology as thought provoking as the content.

Fully one-fourth of the book is devoted to economics in such painstaking detail that, while the specialist may revel, the layman may grow foggy, uninterested, and, unfortunately, bored. But, this does not detract from the overall value of Braudel's effort. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World is a singular achievement in written history which offers the reader a vantage point that I have yet to find elsewhere. 5 stars.

This book is a very detailed starting point for fans of both the Renaissance & Capitalism. It was originally published in French in 1949. The book has eleven illustrations & fifty four lists of figures & is 643 pages long.It is divided into two huge parts with several chapters & sub chapters in each.

Exs: Part 1, "The Role Of The Environment."
Chapter1-The Peninsulas: Mountains, Plateaux, & Plains.
Chapter2-The Heart Of The Mediterranean: Seas & Coasts.
Chapter3-Boundaries: The Greater Mediterranean.
Chapter4-The Mediterranean As A Physical Unit: Climate & History.
Chapter5-The Mediterranean As A Human Unit: Communications & Cities.
Part2, "Collective Destinies & General Trends."
Chapter1-Economies: The Measures Of The Century.
Chapter2-Economies: Precious Metals, Money, & Prices.
Chapter3-Economies: Trade & Transport.
Chapter4-Trade & Transport: The Sailing Ships Of The Atlantic.

At its heart this is a socio-economic history of the second half of
the sixteenth century Mediterranean world that we owe so much too.
The authors depth & breadth of knowledge can be overwhelming at times, but never dull. The clever inclusion of the often ignored topics like climate and geographic conditions presuasively explained why prosperous Capitalism grew in some regions while others remained stagnant.
Chapter 5-"The Human Unit" was the most informative. Most facets of history are here for the reader to absorb. This is the type of book we all wished we had in school.

You need to have been an apprentice historian in the mid-sixties to appreciate the impact this book had on Europeanists. I was thirty-one years old in 1967. I had taught history in high school for eight years and picked up a master's in history at NYU, and I was starting my Ph. D. program in history at Yale, concentrating on early modern European history, and within that specialty, on medieval and early modern political theory. (Later, when I taught college, my specialty course was on Machiavelli, More, Erasmus and Guicciardini.)

Braudel had just published the second edition of his masterpiece. The book had been significantly rewritten and was about a third longer than the original edition. But it was available only in French, which I read well but exceedingly slowly. The first edition --but not the second-- had been translated into Spanish, my preferred second language, so I swotted the Spanish first edition for orals. Reading it in a foreign language, it was too much in a limited amount of time to absorb and integrate with what I already knew about the times. I more or less flubbed the Braudel question in my orals. (In contrast, I did a killer job responding to a question about Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Liturgy.)

Later, teaching a winter term course in college, I assigned the by-then-published English translation of Braudel's second edition to my students, giving myself --at long last-- an opportunity to read it in my native tongue. I was floored! The masterful use of maps and graphs to show hitherto unnoticed trends in history, the wealth of illustrative detail, the scope of his view! Of all the masterworks of the first two generations of Annales historians --Bloch and Febvre, Braudel's other works, Le Roy Ladurie, Aries, Duby, etc.-- Mediterranean is still the undisputed masterpiece on early modern European economic and social history.

Braudel's text on the Mediterranean is considered one of the contemporary classics of historical writing, and I can see why. It sets out to convey a total history of the Mediterranean world in the latter half of the 16th century, but ranges over so much more territory in order to achieve this objective. Just as Jared Diamond builds a foundation on geography, climate, and local flora and fauna in _Guns, Germs , and Steel_, so does Braudel begin his history. However, he does not stop there, and moves on to cover social and economic history, and, in the second volume, deals with the more standard "history of events" typical of most historical literature. Do not skip the second volume, as the tapestry Braudel weaves is not complete without it. The text is very detailed, too detailed at points, but I believe this gives the reader confidence in the authority of the writer. Clearly Braudel has done exhaustive research. You, too, will be exhausted by the time you finish this magnum opus.

First published in its complete form in 1949, then extensively revised in 1966 before being translated into English in 1972, Braudel's massive socio-economic history is, I can confidently assert, more often used today as a reference or cited for its information than read cover to cover. It's a daunting task: 1,300 tightly typeset pages that hold an encyclopedic mass of data, and it took me nearly a year to wing my way through it, dipping into it a couple of sections at a time, which is probably the only way for the nonspecialist to do it justice.

Braudel subverts the traditions of narrative events-focused history by examining everyday life in the civilizations surrounding (and traversing) the Mediterranean Sea. The boundaries of the Mediterranean are varied and flexible: the "conventional" borders drawn by the geographer stretch from "the northern limit of the olive tree to the northern limit of the palm tree," the geologist regards the region as "a long belt stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean," but for Braudel it is more than the sum of these views: the Mediterranean is really a boundless region centered on a sea "whose light grows less as one moves away from it." Keeping this view in mind, Braudel expands his research to include far-away regions that impact the Mediterranean while never losing his focus on the interactions between the principal players; Spain, France, the Italian city-states and the Papacy, the Ottoman Empire and the Levant, and North Africa, as well as the islands whose destinies are often determined by the struggles among their continental neighbors.

This first volume includes all of Part One ("The Role of the Environment"), which examines regional geography (mountains, plains, coasts), climate, navigation and travel, and differences between urban and rural settings, and I found this examination both readable and absorbing. The first half of Part Two ("Collective Destinies and General Trends") focuses on economics: from general factors such as population commerce to mundane matters such as price fluctuations and coinage, the pepper and spice trade, grain imports and exports, and the use of ships for transport. Some of this stuff is pretty fascinating (especially the section on American silver), but even the most caffeinated readers can become hypnotized by the steady accumulation of data whose randomness is necessitated by whatever sources might have survived or been available to the author at the time.

More often than not Braudel points out areas that need further investigation, much of which has been carried out in the intervening decades by legions of economic historians. As a result, Braudel's history is a victim of its own success, and is read less and less largely because his influence has so completely permeated the field that more current, more accurate, more readable volumes exist covering this area and era--although no work on the late sixteenth century has dared to be as wide-reaching (and utterly overwhelming).

Overall, the two volumes are completely engrossing, painstakingly researched and absolutely epic in scope.

Volume I may be a little much for the non-scholar/non-historian with the geographical and agricultural history of the Mediterranean. Braudel's work is detailed, thorough and touches every aspect of life (sheep pasturing, currency exchange, wheat prices by year). The copious footnotes reference primary sources and make for interesting reading in their own right. In this volume, Braudel sets down the foundation which volume II is built upon. Once cannot understand the impact of actions without knowing the history that drove the decisions.

Note: Many footnotes remain in the original Spanish or Italian.

Volume II, however, concentrates on Philip II's Spain and makes for engrossing reading. We see the Mediterranean World (and the "North Countries") through Spanish eyes. Her wars, diplomacy, failed policies, visionaries, religious convictions and economy are all covered in minute detail again with the same first-hand accounts referenced via footnotes.

I really can't do a credit to the breadth and depth of Braudel's work in this review. As an "armchair" history lover, I found this absolutely fascinating (and a bit intimidating at first pass). There can be some "dry" parts (the endless diplomatic dispatches and court speculation) but this is just minor quibbling from an amateur.

To see the various empires, wars and policies from a Spanish viewpoint was eye-opening. I found Braudel to be quite even-handed regarding the Spanish Empire and I have a new understanding of Philip's policies and his possible motivations.

In short, this is an exceedingly detailed, copiously noted expansive history of the Mediterranean during the reign of Philip II with excellent primary sources quoted.