The Mediterranean has been the crucible of human history for more than two thousand years, the birthplace and the graveyard of empires. It was the arena in which the tensions between religions, nations and ideologies have been played out and occasionally erupted into brutal warfare. In this module we explore the changing political and economic structures of the central sea from the fall of Constantinople to the revolutions of the nineteenth century (1453-1900). We will chart the rise and fall of Ottoman and Spanish sea power and the clash at Lepanto, the golden age of Mediterranean piracy, the diasporas of Spanish Jews and Moriscos, Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign and the Mediterranean’s ultimate provincialisation in the age of global empires. Through maps, treaties and records of human connections across the sea, we will discover how seawater unified and divided the Mediterranean’s inhabitants.
