BLUE NETWORKS
About This Website
This website was created in 2017 by third-year students from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, in fulfillment of the requirements for the course 'Blue Networks. Social Networking in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean World'. This course is the last segment of the interdisciplinary three-year BA minor program The Mediterranean World, offered by the Faculty of Arts. Students in the minor come from the departments of History, Art History, Archaeology, Classical Studies, European Languages and Cultures, and International Relations.
The course opened with four plenary sessions ('common seminars') in which network theory was discussed in relation to Antiquity (dr. Williamson), the Middle Ages (dr. van Steensel), and the Early Modern period (dr. Megan Williams). Subsequently, students chose an in-depth seminar in which to examine network dynamics in the respective periods in greater detail.
The following seminars were offered:
These thematically-oriented, discussion-based seminars prepared students to critically approach the literature, specialized sources and source genres for their chosen period (e.g., archaeological sources, chronicles, business correspondence or notarial records, maritime charts or logs, etc.). At the same time, the in-depth seminars prepared students to apply the practical and theoretical skills they developed during the 'common seminars' to their chosen period and topic.
During the seminars, students developed their own research projects. These projects resulted in academic essays as well as web-pages for a broader audience -- showcased here. This website presents the wide range of ways in which network theory can be applied to the Mediterranean world in the pre-modern period.
The course opened with four plenary sessions ('common seminars') in which network theory was discussed in relation to Antiquity (dr. Williamson), the Middle Ages (dr. van Steensel), and the Early Modern period (dr. Megan Williams). Subsequently, students chose an in-depth seminar in which to examine network dynamics in the respective periods in greater detail.
The following seminars were offered:
- Ancient Networks: Religious and Festival Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean - given by Dr. Christina Williamson
- Medieval Networks: Cities, Merchants and Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean World - given by Dr. Arie van Steensel
- Early Modern Networks: The shift from Mediterranean to Atlantic and the “discovery” of the Indian Ocean network - given by Dr. Anjana Singh
These thematically-oriented, discussion-based seminars prepared students to critically approach the literature, specialized sources and source genres for their chosen period (e.g., archaeological sources, chronicles, business correspondence or notarial records, maritime charts or logs, etc.). At the same time, the in-depth seminars prepared students to apply the practical and theoretical skills they developed during the 'common seminars' to their chosen period and topic.
During the seminars, students developed their own research projects. These projects resulted in academic essays as well as web-pages for a broader audience -- showcased here. This website presents the wide range of ways in which network theory can be applied to the Mediterranean world in the pre-modern period.
Selected further reading
- Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde Méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe II (1949; 2nd ed. 1966) [The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, transl. Sian Reynolds (London: 1972)].
- Eric Dursteler, "On Bazaars and Battlefields: Recent Scholarship on Mediterranean Cultural Contacts", Journal of Early Modern History 15 (2011), 413-34.
- Eric Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins , 2006).
- S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols.(Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1967-93).
- Jessica L. Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Genizah Merchants and their Business World (Cambridge: 2012).
- William V. Harris, ed., Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford: 2005).
- Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (London: Blackwell, 2000).
- Irad Malkin, A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford: 2011).
- Irad Malkin et al., eds., "Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean", special issue of the Mediterranean Historical Review 22.1-2 (2007).
- Natalie Rothman, Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).
- Giovanni Ruffini, Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt (Cambridge: 2008).
- Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Mughals and Franks (Oxford: 2005).
- Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale, 2009).
- Francesca Trivellato, "Marriage, Commercial Capital, and Business Agency: Sephardic (and Armenian) Trans-regional Families in the Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-century Mediterranean", in Trans-regional and Transnational Families in Europe and Beyond: Experiences since the Middle Ages, eds. Christopher Johnson et al. (New York: Berghan Books, 2011), 107-30.
- Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: 1991).