Event Date: 17 October 2015
McCrea 336
Royal Holloway University of London
Egham, Surrey
TW20 0EX
Royal Holloway University of London Department of History
Departmental Research seminars 2015/2016
Professor Peregrine Horden (RHUL) – Periodization in Mediterranean History
Trying to rethink the nature and scope of Mediterranean history (in Horden-Purcell, The Corrupting Sea and its successor volume, as well as in Horden/Kinoshita eds. A Companion to Mediterranean History) I have found myself wanting to revise conventional periodization. If the long-term Mediterranean past has any distinctiveness, perhaps it ought also to have a different set of periods. Or should all periodization be abandoned? Transnational and transcontinental historiography has for some while brought out how misleading many established divisions between periods are when applied beyond western Europe. Why do we preserve ‘the Middle Ages’ or (‘early’) ‘modernity’ at all? I hope a specific regional case study will prompt a wider discussion.
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