Encounters Across the Eastern Mediterranean

“What is the Mediterranean? A thousand things at once. Not one landscape, but countless landscapes. Not one sea, but a succession of seas. Not one civilization, but a number of civilizations, superimposed one upon the other.”¹

One of the defining figures in the study of the Mediterranean is Fernand Braudel. For him, the Mediterranean is more than a collection of regions defined by geographical boundaries, cultures, or ethnic identities. It is a space of movement shaped as much by mountains, passes, and straits as by trade routes, migrations, wars, and encounters of all kinds. In other words, a broader Mediterranean encompasses the Mediterranean in its narrower sense.²This becomes clear when one considers the web of relationships that have developed within the basin and extended far beyond it.

Migration has been a driving force shaping the history of the Mediterranean. People, ideas, plants, techniques, objects, and images have been in constant motion across the region for centuries. Yet the conditions of this mobility are far from equal: alongside trade and cultural exchange, famine, drought, epidemics, wars, and border regimes have informed the terms of circulation. We can therefore think of the Mediterranean as a hybrid, heterogeneous, and multilayered landscape formed by an ever-evolving network of relationships. Tracing the fractures, the fissures, and the moments when circulation is interrupted or reconfigured not only brings seemingly contradictory histories to light, but also offers a way to examine the interconnections between geopolitical, social, and ecological dynamics. This perspective allows us to move beyond the dichotomy of continuity versus rupture that often underlies narratives focused on national histories or major political events. Placing circulation at the center brings historical processes unfolding across different temporalities and scales into relation.

This series on the Eastern Mediterranean, conceived with Ümit Fırat Açıkgöz from the American University of Beirut and Lorans Tanatar Baruh from Salt, came together as Israel’s attacks on Palestine and Lebanon continued to escalate. At a time when millions of people had been displaced, and homes, farmlands, rivers, and trees devastated, what it meant to turn to the region’s history was inevitably among the questions we found ourselves grappling with. (For when the reality of violence weighs so heavily, the attempt to understand and make sense of the past—like anything else that doesn’t directly respond to the urgencies of the present—can feel like a futile or even frivolous endeavor.) Yet, precisely at a time when the urgencies of the present can so easily constrain our thinking, we felt there was value in situating the present within a broader historical horizon.³We wanted to remind ourselves that political orders, borders, and power relations that appear natural or inevitable are historically constructed—and therefore always open to change.

The series, to be developed over the coming months with contributions from invited writers, aims to explore the intersections and interactions between visual culture, architecture, ecology, economics, and politics in the Eastern Mediterranean from the late 19th century to the present. Tracing circulation, foregrounding microhistories, considering human and non-human actors together, and looking beyond national histories form the common ground of the featured contributions. The narratives built around communities, ideas, objects, and spaces also reveal the entanglements of these histories with colonial practices, border politics, ecological breakdown, and ongoing wars.

From the journey of seeds across the Mediterranean to plants that have taken root in the region over centuries and their relationship to shifting policies of land, labor, and food, and from the story of a dissident in exile to buildings bearing the traces of both colonialism and transnational encounters, the series offers different ways of understanding shared historical processes alongside particular experiences. In doing so, it sheds light on overlooked histories, obscured memories, and narratives left at the margins.

It is our hope that the series will open new paths for thought to flourish, prompting original questions and generative discussions.