Fernand Braudel, Les Mémoires de la Méditerranée : une histoire à suivre

In his posthumous Memory and the Mediterranean, Braudel interprets the history of the Ancient Mediterranean as a unique adventure in which the Sea, its geographical and geological setting, is the major actor/subject. Nevertheless, one can notice, and even deplore, the historical split between East and West, enhanced and intensified by the subsequent events, in spite some periods of reconciliation. The legacy of this spatial approach of history is to be recognized in some of the contemporary historiographical trends: the network approach and the history of the landscape – the study of “oecumenal units” in order to apprehend the global through the local. There are also situations in history where the marginal, the detail or the contingent event have global consequences: such event was for example the murder of the Roman legatus in Syria, in 162 B.C. Also, the unification of the Mediterranean under Rome is part of those give-and-take processes between Orient and Occident leading to intellectual and religious changes