A propos du concept de méditerranée. Expérience géographique du monde et mondialisation

The concept of 'Mediterranean' has been widely studied and discussed over the past two decades. This article will attempt to answer the following question: to what extent can we use the term 'Mediterranean' to describe areas other than the Mediterranean? In order to control the sometimes chaotic analogic use of this term, some writers have proposed certain criteria, for instance, size: 'Mediterranean' is a medium-sized area--a 'mesocosm', as O. Dolfuss described it--of not more than a few thousand kilometers. However, the discussion about the use of 'Mediterranean' for areas of widely differing sizes, such as the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, is deliberately vague. The purpose of this paper is to throw light on this specific issue, and to seek to understand why, between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, many authors--geographers in particular--used this analogy; were they not seeking to express a new experience of the world, which is globalization