French Mediterraneans: Transnational and Imperial Histories ed. by Patricia M.E. Lorcin, Todd Shepard (review)

authors in the issue encourage scholars to challenge accepted boundaries and divisions, others work across traditional boundaries through specific studies of ruling women of the Holy Roman Empire (Penelope Nash), and of Jerusalem and Navarre (Elena Woodacre). Tracy Adams’s work on Isabeau de Bavière documents the reiterative nature of much secondary literature and argues for a return to primary sources; Kathleen Wellman’s study of two royal mothers: Catherine de Medici and Louise Savoy, underscores that for women, just as for men, there are many different routes to power. Christine Adams’s analysis of commentaries on two mistresses: Madame de Montespan and Madame Tallien, stresses the importance of re-examining the accepted historiography and warns against repeating outdated interpretations. Marie Kelleher and Theresa Earenfight, broaden the critical lens by re-thinking the fundamental definitions of women and power.Constance Berman’s concluding article on thirteenthcentury Cistercian nunneries draws together key concepts of this volume by bringing to light long-neglected documents to demonstrate the strong evidence for powerful feudal ‘Lady/Lords’ of northern France. The issue will be of significant interest to students and scholars of women and power in the fields of French or European history, literature, and gender studies. In its persuasive demonstration of the dangers of relying on past scholarship and the importance of interrogating accepted historiographies, it provides a valuable contribution to the field. Northern Arizona University Erika E. Hess Lorcin, Patricia M.E., and Todd Shepard, eds. French Mediterraneans: Transnational and Imperial Histories. Lincoln: UP of Nebraska, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8032-4993-6. Pp. 444. $65. The twelve essays in this collection fall into three parts—“Rethinking Mediterranean Maps (Maps to Rethink the Mediterranean)”, “Shifting Frameworks of Migration (Migration across the Mediterranean)”, and “Margins Remade (by the Mediterranean)”—that delineate the reverberations of the French Revolution on the Mediterranean and analyze broad-based“Mediterranean interactions”(168), from the late eighteenth century to the period of decolonization. The strength of this study lies in its de-compartmentalization of separate“histories”and its methodologically diverse nature. The book brings into conversation traditionally trained historians in addition to historians trained as Ottomanists, as historians of Jews and Judaism, of the Maghreb or of the Arab Levant (2). Its interdisciplinary approach allows to examine the imaginary and historical space of the Mediterranean through a variety of lenses and to illuminate the complexity of the Mediterranean in the context of French transnational and imperial histories. This study, which features essays by a number of international scholars (Marc Aymes, Julia Clancy-Smith, Ehdem Eldem, Susan Gilson Miller, and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, among others), is innovative because it brings diverse 282 FRENCH REVIEW 90.3 Reviews 283 historiographies into a wider dialogue. It does not solely focus on historical developments , wars, and revolutions, but also takes into account the impact of environmental, geographical, and hygienic factors on the concept of ‘méditerranité’(103). For instance, chapter 4 discusses the impact of the 1960 earthquake in Agadir on urban planning, transnational diplomacy and Mediterranean politics. Ottoman-French relations are examined in chapter 1, focusing on the Ottoman Empire and its three revolutions. Transnational relations between France and North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean , in particular Mount Lebanon and Syria, the “France of the Levant” (76), are traced in chapters 2 and 3. This logically leads to an examination of migration patterns and circulation trends: discussions of French-Ottoman matrimonial alliances in eighteenth century Constantinople (ch. 5), currency reforms and forgery (ch. 6), the “French”educational trajectory of three African women (Fadhma Amrouche, Tawhida Ben Shaykh, and Dorra Bouzid, ch. 7), and that of Moroccan social scientist Moïse Nahon (ch. 10). The discussion in chapter 8 of who was considered European in Tunisia, Algerian, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, with the complex judicial and legal ramification citizenship entails, is a timely one, considering the current European migrant crisis and the thorny issue of multiple citizenships. Border-crossing also defines part 3 with a discussion of the jurisprudential impact of the Dreyfus Affair in Algeria (ch. 9). Readers expecting a broad sweep of French-Mediterranean histories will be disappointed or confused by the numerous chapters dealing with highly particular case studies that might...