The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550–1870: A Geohistorical Approach (review)

Faruk Tabak, Ertegün Assistant Professor of Modern Turkish Studies at Georgetown University, offers a holistic, integrated view of the Mediterranean region during the period when the region's importance in global commerce, agriculture and politics was on the wane. The author devotes much attention to the twin city-states of Venice and Genoa and their resilience at the twilight of the Mediterranean's power due to a steady infusion of silver and the increasing salience of manufacturing. Venetian and Genoese merchants had much to do with the steadily westward relocation of such crops as sugar and cotton, and they also continued to play a banking role in conjunction with Amsterdam and Antwerp.

It was during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the trinity of products—wheat, tree crops (olives and vines), and livestock (sheep and goats)—was fully reestablished in the Mediterranean region. During this period the center of gravity of the Mediterranean moved from its plains to its hillsides and mountains. This shift, the author says, was a "prolonged and slow-moving process with a lifespan of over three centuries, lasting from the 1550s to the 1870s." Tabak points out that these changes took place throughout the Mediterranean, but of particular ecological significance was the Little Ice Age, which stretched roughly through the same period and was characterized by wetter and colder conditions and increased climatic variability, which turned cultivation of the lowlands into a very difficult undertaking.

The author also notes the impact on the Mediterranean of developments elsewhere, for example, Baltic grain and American silver and food crops. In the introduction, Tabak presents the structure of the book and his basic thesis of Mediterranean transformation. The first part, consisting of three chapters, depicts the significance of Genoa and Venice, their vast trading reach, and their symbiotic relationship with the Hapsburg, Ottoman, and other empires. The second part describes the withdrawal of agrarian cultivation from the low-lying lands, which was eventually reversed as the climate changed and quinine was developed to combat malaria. The concluding chapter is titled "The Mediterranean between the Leek-Green Sea and the Green Sea." The term Leek-Green Sea refers to the Indian Ocean and is attributed to Ptolemy, while the Green Sea refers to the Atlantic.

Tabak takes issue with arguments that the Mediterranean during this period was essentially divided between rival imperial polities (Ottoman, Hapsburg, and later the British among others) or religions and argues that Venice and Genoa and the rivalry between them played pivotal roles in determining events and developments in the Mediterranean, especially until the seventeenth century.

Tabak also describes the various ecological and political factors in the nineteenth century that brought an end to the waning and prepared the way for the modern era in the Mediterranean. Some of these factors were exogenous to the region, for example, the rise of Britain, but others were endogenous, among them, the recolonization of the plains due to global warming, urban growth, and control of malaria.

Overall, The Waning of the Mediterranean is extremely ambitious and broad in scope. The author has obviously done prodigious research—there are more than fifteen hundred endnotes, and the volume contains an extensive bibliography. For an interested reader, the book presents broad and sweeping themes on a historical period when the Mediterranean is often treated as a secondary topic or when focus is placed on particular aspects, for example, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, and Greece.

This reviewer was distracted at times by the author's overall organization of the book and the effort not to repeat constantly the same formulation. For example, Venice and Genoa were understandably given various synonyms but "the cities of saints" seemed to be going a bit far. Similarly, there are occasional sentences or phases that would have used a sharper editor's pencil, for example...