Mediterranean Diaspora Research Articles

Performing Mediterraneanness: Mediterranean Diaspora and Solidarity Politics in Chapel Hill, NC

ABSTRACT The Mediterranean diaspora in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, provides an excellent vantage point for the examination of solidarity economies that challenge inequalities and nexuses of power relations on both local and international levels. Despite its sociopolitical and cultural significance for the study of diasporic negotiations of nationalism and the constitution of transnational bonds, however, Chapel Hill’s Mediterranean communities are unrepresented in the literature. Combining participant observation with anecdotal cross-cultural encounters and oral histories, this article demonstrates that Chapel Hill’s Mediterranean diaspora creates alliances in ways that exceed the nation-state. Once uprooted from their geopolitical context, Chapel Hill’s Mediterranean communities, which consist of first-generation immigrants, refer to their shared Mediterraneanness in order to enhance and make sense of their bottom-up world-making practices and their subversive capacities. Performance, both as formally aestheticized cultural practices and as everyday expressive acts, is of key significance for the ways in which these communities negotiate the politics of solidarity and develop alliances within and beyond the nation-state. Therefore, the author draws upon the “performative turn” in ethnography and proposes a methodology that utilizes performance as both research content and a way of knowing.

Review: The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity Cost the Jews, by Ross Shepard Kraemer

Review: <i>The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity Cost the Jews</i>, by Ross Shepard Kraemer

1669: A 17th Century Mediterranean Diaspora

1669: A 17th Century Mediterranean Diaspora

Ross Shepard Kraemer, The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity. What Christianity Cost the Jews. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2020

Article Ross Shepard Kraemer, The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity. What Christianity Cost the Jews. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2020 was published on August 1, 2021 in the journal Historische Zeitschrift (volume 313, issue 1).

The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity Cost the Jews by Ross Shephard Kraemer

The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity Cost the Jews by Ross Shephard Kraemer

Mooring Aslima

AbstractIn Claude McKay’s Romance in Marseille, the entanglement of Spain and Morocco emerges through the diasporic figure of Aslima, the Moroccan sex worker. This essay examines McKay’s Maurophilia, which he circuitously refers to as “Afro-Orientalism” in his various writings. Maurophilia not only foregrounds Aslima’s associations with Spain and Morocco but also highlights McKay’s engagement with transhistorical Mediterranean diasporas, including the intra-African slave trade and Iberian Moriscos and conversos settling in North Africa following the Reconquista. This essay argues that while Aslima’s associations with Moorish-Iberian performance styles influence McKay’s modernist poetics and radical aspirations for a global pandiasporic Black alliance, Romance in Marseille ultimately forecloses the prospect of a pan-Mediterranean, Black Atlantic globalism because of contradictions of gender and religion.

El descubrimiento de la primera traducción impresa en ladino de &lt;em&gt;Pirqué Abot&lt;/em&gt; (Salónica, hacia 1570)

Entre 1552 y 1965 se publicaron muchas traducciones de Pirqué Abot (ʻTratado de los Padresʼ) en ladino, en caracteres hebreos o latinos, en las ciudades del Imperio oto­mano, denominadas orientales, así como en las ciudades de Italia, Ámsterdam y Londres, consideradas occidentales. La primera traducción aljamiada conocida es la versión de Venecia de 1601, publicada por la imprenta de Giovanni di Gara. Investigaciones ante­riores han demostrado que la versión de Venecia de 1601 se asemeja mucho más a las versiones posteriores publicadas en el Imperio otomano, especialmente en Salónica, que a las publicadas en Italia, Ámsterdam y Londres. Recientemente se ha rescatado, entre los documentos de la Guenizá de El Cairo, una versión de Pirqué Abot publicada hacia 1570 en la imprenta de Yosef Yaabets en Salónica. Al comparar la versión de 1601 con la recientemente descubierta, se observa que no sólo son casi idénticas, sino que de hecho la versión de Venecia se basa en la versión de Salónica. Otros textos publicados en Venecia en el mismo período corroboran esta conclusión. Esta edición en ladino es ahora considerada como la más antigua que se conoce.

Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean: Private Order and Public Institutions by Taco Terpstra

410 PHOENIX Trade in the Ancient Mediterranean: Private Order and Public Institutions. By Taco Terpstra. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World). 2019. Pp. x, 274, 15 figs. Taco Terpstra's recent book considering trade in the ancient Mediterranean is a broad synthesis of the sort that we tend not to see much of anymore. Harkening back to the important studies of Moses Finley and A. H. M. Jones,1 he believes that the economies of the region shared particular commonalities created through their relationship to ancient states, in this case the institutions and the enforcement of private order. Terpstra’s focus is the role of states in the economic development of the ancient Mediterranean between ca 700 b.c.e. and ca 700 c.e. (3–4). This is a daring undertaking by any stretch, let alone in ancient economic studies, given the discipline’s ever-increasing emphasis on microeconomic analyses, which Terpstra himself comments on (226). The book is made up of seven chapters: the first acts as an introduction, while the penultimate chapter serves as an epilogue and the final chapter provides an overall conclusion. Chapter One sets the scene for Terpstra’s arguments, namely that “state formation and consolidation had an aggregate positive effect on the economy of the ancient Mediterranean ,” and that “we should not ascribe that effect to ancient states acting as third-party enforcers of private property rights” (23). On the basis of recent studies and evidence from Mediterranean shipwrecks and lead pollution, he provides a foundation for the themes that reoccur throughout the chapters that follow: commercial connectivity, economic migration, social trust, and state ideology. Drawing on a broad range of scholarship concerning definitions of the state, he adopts the social-order theory introduced by Douglass North, John Wallis, and Barry Weingast in order to elucidate how ancient states controlled trade (17–19, 29).2 Chapter Two considers ancient Mediterranean diaspora trade, and focuses on the Phoenicians. In Terpstra’s view (built on “trust networks” [34] and “natural states” [35–36]), the absence of third-party enforcement meant that a diaspora could act to deter misbehaviour by its own members not only against one another, but also against outsiders. Phoenician city-states, such as Sidon and Tyre, retained a degree of public involvement in their diasporas, but public-private interaction, epitomised by proxenia (“public friendship”) between the host communities and the diasporas themselves was integral; it allowed proxenoi to operate in defined and mutually beneficial positions within these communities that, in turn, established and facilitated the principles of private order. By the Roman period, Terpstra argues, the situation had changed significantly. Based on the epigraphy of Phoenician groups from Puteoli in the first two centuries c.e. (71–74), he states that these groups used Roman imperial ideology to enhance their relationship with Rome. In effect, it allowed those working in the economy the agency to shape the institutional environment of the state. While a consequence of this was the strengthening of private order, this relationship also reveals a shared, fluid dynamic in which the Phoenician traders and the Roman state were both agents and stakeholders. In Chapter Three, Terpstra leans on one of his central tenets, namely that state formation and consolidation had an aggregate positive effect on the ancient economy. 1 M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (updated ed.; Berkeley and London 1999); A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey (Oxford 1986). 2 D. C. North, J. J. Wallis, and B. R. Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge 2009). BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 411 He argues that Hellenistic state formation led to the increased economic integration of the Eastern Mediterranean, through the use of ancient Greek, the unification of monetary standards, and the concentration of significant resources in the hands of the Hellenistic monarchs (85). Using both Mancur Olson’s “stationary-bandit model,”3 and the evidence from the Zenon archive (compiled by an employee of Apollonios, the dioiketes under Ptolemy ii Philadelphus), Terpstra suggests that the Ptolemies’ fiscal policies were neither short-term nor predatory...

Mediterranean diasporas: politics and ideas in the long 19th century

ABSTRACTThis round table discusses a collection that explores the circulation of ideas across and beyond the Mediterranean in the long nineteenth century, a space normally consigned to the margins of historiographical concerns and studied in discrete geographical areas. The commentators agree that the diasporic approach centred on biography taken by the collection demonstrates the existence of a plurality of liberal strands and political projects, highlights the importance of exchanges between European peripheries like Russia, the Adriatic and Greece, and challenges the notion of the derivative nature of eastern and oriental political culture. At the same time, the round table suggests new paths for future research, pointing to the desirability of producing a transnational conceptual history of liberalism that connects and compares East and West, and of applying the same transnational methodological approach to other seas.

Mosaic Paideia: The Law of Moses within Philo of Alexandria’s Model of Jewish Education

AbstractPaideia is one of Philo’s most consistent preoccupations. It was so thoroughly foundational for the Alexandrian that he built it into nearly every aspect of his philosophy and worldview. Paideia was the tool needed to acquire virtue and wisdom, eradicate the passions, become an ideal citizen of the world, and secure the immortal life of the soul. The following explores the role of the Mosaic law within Philo’s overall theory of education, looking at what made the law such a unique pedagogical resource, how it functioned at various levels of education, what its relationship was to the other forms of education Philo deemed necessary—the curriculum of encyclical paideia and the study of philosophy—and, ultimately, what Philo’s idealized vision of Jewish education can tell us about his deeper concerns for his fellow Alexandrian Jews and his understanding of Jewish identity in the Mediterranean diaspora.

Review of Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou, eds, Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century

Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou, eds. Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. xiii + 217 pages

Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century ed. by Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou

Reviewed by: Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century ed. by Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou Evdoxios Doxiadis (bio) Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou, editors, Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 2016. Pp. xiii + 217. Paper $29.95. Mediterranean Diasporas is a great example of the value of collaborative efforts in presenting and analyzing themes that span across national historiographies, languages, and disciplinary categories. Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou, the editors of this volume, elected to focus their investigation on what they call diasporic intellectuals and, by so doing, succeeded in revealing a new perspective on Mediterranean history in the nineteenth century. The contributors in the volume problematize notions of nationality, imperial allegiances, and the nation state, often rejecting common understandings of the reception of Western ideas in the region. This volume breaks down the compartmentalization of national historiographies that has proven remarkably durable and challenging to the efforts of many historians of the region over recent decades. [End Page 264] As Thomas Gallant states in a thoughtful afterword, the chapters of this volume contribute to a significant revision of our understanding of diaspora, transnationalism, and cosmopolitanism, as well as to the history and transmission of ideas around the Mediterranean world and Europe (207). The first three chapters ("Letters from Spain: The 1820 Revolution and the Liberal International" by Juan Luis Simal, "An Itinerant Liberal: Almeida Garrett's Exilic Itineraries and Political Ideas in the Age of Southern European Revolutions (1820–34)" by Gabriel Paquette, and "Learning Lessons from the Iberian Peninsula: Italian Exiles and the Making of a Risorgimento Without People, 1820–48" by Grégoire Bron) discuss the impact of the Iberian revolutions of the 1820s and the subsequent civil strife that lasted into the 1830s in both Spain and Portugal. Placing their discussion within a larger context of questions about national sovereignty and political liberty in a post-Napoleonic world, they draw attention to the role of political exiles in crafting a discourse throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. All three chapters show the impact of the promulgation of the Cadiz Constitution in Southern Europe, the effect of the failures of the Spanish and Portuguese constitutional regimes of the 1820s, and the eventual successes of liberalism in the 1830s and 1840s—all of which has not been sufficiently considered by Greek historians within the context of Greek political developments. Bron's chapter in particular acts as a wonderful bridge from Iberia to Italy by considering these effects on the Italian exiles who took part in the events of the Iberian Peninsula. In chapter 4, "Mediterranean Liberals? Italian Revolutionaries and the Making of a Colonial Sea, ca. 1800–1830," Maurizio Isabella turns to the examination of several Italian (or Italo-Greek) intellectuals whose ideas were influenced by travel and exile, as well as by the presence of the new French and British imperial projects in the Mediterranean. Through the careers of intellectuals like Vittorio Barzoni, Ugo Foscolo, Alfio Grassi, or Gianbattista Marochetti, Isabella is able to explore the nature of early nineteenth-century liberalism, and imperial liberalism in particular, going beyond the traditional approach that examines such figures within Italian (or Greek) nationalism and situating them instead within a broader framework of Mediterranean liberalism, where contradictions—such as combining strong philhellenic ideas with praise for the Ottoman Empire, as in Grassi's case—can easily exist (86). Chapter 5, "Ottomans on the Move: Hassuna D'Ghies and the 'New Ottomanism' of the 1830s" by Ian Coller, is a welcome extension to North Africa of some of the themes presented by the earlier authors. The concept of mobility is once more crucial in Coller's discussion of "New Ottomanism" through the experiences of D'Ghies, a man of North African origins, who was educated [End Page 265] in Europe and advocated independence from the Ottoman Empire. Later, he would enter Ottoman service and, as the editor of Le Moniteur Ottoman, would embrace the cause of Ottoman revival and reform. Unfortunately, Coller's chapter is the only one dealing directly with North Africa and would have benefited by the inclusion of another chapter, possibly on Egypt, which...

Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou, editors. Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century .

Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou, editors. <i>Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century</i> .

:The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora

:<i>The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora</i>

The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: a Mediterranean diaspora

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Abbrevations and Note on Transcription List of frequently used terms List of Contributors Introduction Mercedes Garcia-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers Part I. The Expulsion. Preparations, Debates, and Process 1: The Geography of the Morisco Expulsion: A Quantitative Study Bernard Vincent 2: The Expulsion of the Moriscos in the Context of Philip III's Mediterranean Policy Miguel Angel de Bunes Ibarra 3: Rhetorics of the Expulsion Antonio Feros 4: The Religious Debate in Spain Rafael Benitez Sanchez Blanco 5: The Vatican's Position towards the Expulsion Stefania Pastore 6: The Religious Orders and the Expulsion of the Moriscos: Doctrinal Controversies and Hispano-Papal Relations Paolo Broggio 7: The Unexecuted Plans for the Eeradication of Jewish Heresy in the Hispanic Monarchy and the Example of the Moriscos: The Thwarted Expulsion of the Judeoconversos Juan Ignacio Pulido 8: The Moriscos Who Stayed Behind or Returned: Post-1609 James B. Tueller Part II. The Morisco Diaspora 9: The Moriscos outside Spain: Routes and Financing Luis F. Bernabe Pons and Jorge Gil Herrera 10 The Moriscos in France after the Expulsion: Notes for the History of a Minority Youssef El Alaoui 11: Moriscos in Ottoman Galata, 1609-1620s Tijana Krstic 12: The Moriscos in Morocco: from Granadan Emigration to the hornacheros of Sale Mercedes Garcia-Arenal 13: Andalusi Immigration and Urban Development in Algiers (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) Sakina Missoum 14: The Moriscos in Tunisia Olatz Villanueva Zubizarreta 15: The Expulsion of 1609-1614 and the Polemical Writings of the Moriscos Living in the Diaspora Gerard Wiegers 16: Converted Jews and Moriscos in the Diaspora Natalia Muchnik General Bibliography Index of places Index of names

Colonies - Colonisation - Colonialism

Colonies, colonisation and, in particular, colonialism are concepts carrying heavy ideological subtexts – yet they loom over the current debate about the dynamism of the Iron Age Mediterranean. Forty years after M.I. Finley’s ‘attempt at a typology’, this paper tries to thin out the terminological jungle: by employing cross-cultural historical comparison, it demonstrates how complex and manifold seemingly straightforward ideal types are; and that ‘colonies’ and ‘colonialism’ in the classical period of European imperialism were altogether different from the settlements Greeks and Phoenicians established in their Mediterranean diasporas.

Adrift on the black Mediterranean diaspora: African migrant writing in Spain

Focusing on the strategies employed to recreate agency in the black diaspora in postcolonial Europe and taking at its basis recent narratives produced by African migrant writers in Spain – Cameroonians Inongo-vi-Makomé and Susan Akono, and Guinean Donato Ndongo – this paper explores the ways in which identity is reconstructed in diasporic situations, to answer questions such as what images of the self and the other are created and disseminated at a national level and in the wider context of globalization. Spain, the historically homogeneous out-migration country is transforming into a site of multicultural interaction as it becomes a destination for members of several diasporas, many with their own legacies of colonialism and racism. Due to its European Union status and growing presence in the world economy, the nation is participating in a global phenomenon in which immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees are looking towards the new Europe as an impenetrable fortress. This paper attempts to discuss these issues within the tangled web of forms of power and subjection exercised upon immigrants through Western imperialism.

WHAT IS THE FIFTH SIBYLLINE ORACLE ?

AbstractCan The Fifth Sibylline Oracle be useful for the study of Second Temple Judaism? J.J. Collins thought so, and John M.G. Barclay has attempted to use it in his construction of Jewish life and thought in the Mediterranean Diaspora. But David S. Potter and Erich Gruen have cautioned that because the Sibylline Oracles were preserved by Christians and subjected to extensive redaction and interpolation, they cannot be dated with any certainty and therefore cannot be reliably used for the study of Second Temple Judaism. In this article I attempt to identify and date two clear strata in The Fifth Sibylline Oracle, explaining how the document came into its final, or near-final form. Then I make some preliminary suggestions regarding what The Fifth Sibylline Oracle may tell us about Second Temple Judaism.

The Image of the Jew in Flavius Josephus' Paraphrase of the Bible

The Image of in Flavius Josephus' Paraphrase of Bible, by Paul Spilsbury. TSAJ 69. Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1998. Pp. xiv + 286. DM 148.00. This valuable monograph is a revision and expansion of a doctoral dissertation completed under supervision of William Horbury at University of Cambridge in 1994. Drawing Antiquities 1-11 to explore Josephus's construction of ideal Spilsbury provides important insights for study of late first century CE and Josephus. In a lengthy introduction (pp. 1-50) Spilsbury engages with contemporary scholarship a number of important subjects and outlines approach adopted in work. The reader is briefly introduced to Josephus, whom Spilsbury labels a Roman Jew (p. 7), and to issue of self-definition a real concern of post-70 C.E. era. While acknowledging need for proper caution in analysis of Josephus's writings regarding his own career, Spilsbury urges reader to ensure that all interpretations are based on content of he wrote taken a (p. 7). In such a context Spilsbury presents Josephus in a somewhat positive light a personally concerned to defend his people and make their customs as a whole intelligible to Greco-Roman world (p. 11) in his selective paraphrase of Bible. Next Spilsbury seeks to clarify manner in which his monograph stands apart from textual comparative work of such scholars T. W. Franxman and C. Begg and portrait studies of L. Feldman. Spilsbury points out difficulty in establishing written and oral materials Josephus drew upon. His work is primarily concerned with constructing an overall picture of ideal from entire biblical paraphrase. Here again, Spilsbury presents an important contribution to interpretation of Josephus: he did not only write what his audience wanted to hear (p. 34); he had his own views it meant to be a Jew (p. 34). In order not to impose categories onto biblical paraphrase, Spilsbury adopts a chronological approach. The net effect is production of a cumulative portrait, noting repetitions, developments, and refinements in image of contained in Antiquities 1-11. Yet even with this approach Spilsbury makes choices regarding to examine, with focus being placed the principal characters, main events and speeches (p. 35). There is a useful brief excursus in introduction Josephus's use of Jew, Hebrew, and Israelites (pp. 36-42). A second excursus Jewish Identity in Diaspora-Some Perspectives from Social Sciences (pp. 42-50) is used by Spilsbury to identify appropriate terminology by which to describe Josephus's Jew. Spilsbury signals that terms assimilation, acculturation, and accommodation- defined by J. M. G. Barclay (Jews in Mediterranean Diaspora, 1996) will be framework within which Josephus's image of will be placed. Chapter 1 (The Patriarchs) covers Antiquities 1-2.200. Spilsbury examines accounts of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Reuben, Judah, and Joseph. …

Studies in the ancient Jewish Mediterranean Diaspora

Studies in the ancient Jewish Mediterranean Diaspora