Modern Mediterranean: Dynamics of a World Region 1800-2000

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Manuel Borutta
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2017 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 360003172

Due to current conflicts, crises and wars, the Mediterranean is back on the agenda of the social sciences. Yet, in the field of modern history this paradigm is almost absent. The network therefore aims to transcend the fragmentation of separate historiographies and get an integrated view of the late modern period of this region. It focuses on the dynamics and transformations of the region between 1800 and 2000. Instead of taking the Mediterranean as a natural given, the network will explore how this space was invented and shaped in the modern age. Against Mediterraneanist myths of Mediterranean unity, continuity and singularity, the region is conceived as a contact zone between Africa, Asia and Europe that was connected to and is comparable with other regions of the world.The members and guests of the network will meet at German research centres of the Mediterranean (Deutsches Historisches Institut Rom, Deutsch-Italienisches Studienzentrum Venedig, Orient Institut Beirut, Orient Institut Istanbul, Zentrum für Mittelmeerstudien Bochum, Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin) in order to explore themes which are at the core of current debates on Mediterranean history: modernity and tradition, port cites and islands, mobility and borders, ideology and religion, knowledge and representation, transnational and global history. The discussions of the network will result in a number of publications, among them an anthology collecting texts representing the new historiography of the modern Mediterranean. In this way, Mediterranean history will not only be presented as an innovative field of historical research but also as a new approach that is able to combine European and non-European perspectives in a productive way helping us to understand what is at stake in this region at the moment and in the future.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks