Mediterranean Imaginaries

Abstract

In 1912, the French writer Paul Bruzon offered a standard account of what he believed empire implied for the nations of Europe. Each people, he contended, had a particular geographical space in which to expand and spread their ‘civilisation’. The Anglo-Saxons had held sway in North America while the Russians were actively working to extend their domination across Central Asia and the historic homeland of the Slavs. The country could not ‘renounce the mission imposed on it by history, its geographical situation, its social circumstances’. While French imperial ideologues were inclined to see the Mediterranean as a historically French space, Spain and Italy clearly understood the region to be their own natural sphere of influence. Geopolitical struggles aside, the arguments presented by French, Spanish, Italian imperialists all drew upon a common set of perceptions and rationales. The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of Arabist historiography in Spain, with chairs in Arabic studies created in the major Spanish universities by mid-century.