Recent approaches to the history of the early modern Mediterranean have highlighted its role as a shared space, a contact zone and a zone of encounter. In many ways, however, these approaches remain embedded in assumptions—regarding the availability of sources, the norms of statecraft, the nature of confessional identity, and so forth—that reflect the realities of its Christian half much more closely than its Islamic one.
With this in mind, this seminar proposes to revisit recent scholarship on the Mediterranean in a way that privileges a view from its southern and eastern shores. Themes to be addressed include religious conversion, intellectual life, slavery, land tenure, commercial practices, and legal cultures, among others.