Riku Sayuj's Reviews > The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

It is strange to read such an expansive history book and realise there is no real theme to the book. Why would an articulate historian write such a well-researched book that summarises 1000s of years of history, without having an overarching theme to be supported by all that effort? Most of the popular expansive history books (think Sapiens, think GGS, etc.) are actually organised around powerful central themes that allow the reader to engage with the history being told - to have solid reasons to stay engaged with it. Unless a reader is only looking to be informed in a general way about what he is reading, it is the argumentative flow that keeps him/her engaged. That is the strength of narrative histories that are also thematic.

Abulafia has instead focused on exactly what his title says "A history of the Mediterranean region" which is further circumscribed by limiting it to the human aspect of it, ie., to the communities that lived on its shores, the trade that crossed its surface, the privacy that disrupted it often, the rivalries for its control and the political alliances and stories that flourished around the great central sea of European history. Now if you think about how such a history would be written, it would be immediately clear that it would end up being a very European history, that peeks into the Asian events once or twice, especially through the peephole that is the Suez Canal. Unless there is a thesis that there is some central character about the region which shaped the flow of histories that touched its shores, what does such a history really add to a reader who is already well versed with the general flow of European history? If all you are getting is a summary of history that is more limited due to some artificial constraints that disallows the author to talk about certain aspects, what is the value in spending the time required to read all of 700+ pages? Not much really.

In my opinion, a truer history of the Mediterranean would first get the reader familiar with the geography of the Mediterranean, because the moment you define the book based on a geographic entity, geography has to take centre stage in some way. Once the Mediterranean region was established well, the author might then proceed to the flow of history but keep drawing our attention to the ways in which the unique features of the Mediterranean (which is in fact pretty unique) impacts things. This is the kind of book that I expected this to be, and that was my motivation to start it. The impacts might be large or small, or even marginal, but that would be a more useful or thought-provoking book than a constrained history of Europe, especially since the constraints do not really work in a continent like Europe where the interactions between various countries were too central to the flow of history. So, for instance, we cant have Russia's role limited to its pining for the Mediterranean and its attempts to strike up a better relationship status. That only leaves the reader with a limited perspective, which is fine in a thematic work on history, but not in a general history, I guess.

These are some of the reasons why I believe I could never really connect fully with the book and even found myself skipping through some all-too-familiar areas. I could do that safe in the knowledge that I am not missing any arguments by doing so. The same cannot be done in a thematic work because one might lose the flow of arguments if one skips over a topic or period just because one is familiar with it, since we cant be sure exactly how the author is going to use that to substantiate his argument/theme. But in any general history book, we can easily skip over things either because we already know it or because that specific era or topic is not of particular interest at the moment.

But all that said, Abulafia is still a very good historian and this is still a very readable account. It is held together beautifully even though it is a tough job to give structure and coherence to a limited history like this and still keep it true to the original promise to the reader that it is going to be a history of a specific region. Abulafia exhibits the command and discipline required to reign in his history, event though even after the reigning in, it is still a sprawling beast of a book. It is enjoyable, and it is knowledgeable, but I am not sure if it serves a purpose, ie., if there is any reason for someone to actually pick up the book and make the effort of reading through the 700+ pages of it.