Conclusioni

The Mediterranean has re-established itself at the centre of historiographic interest. The nature of the Mediterranean is being discussed: was it a link or a frontier for the people who inhabited its coasts? Is it possible to speak of a Mediterranean civilization, of a common koinè to the peoples who live around it and on it? Furthermore, in recent years we have wondered what is the right model of history of the Mediterranean, if the view proposed by Braudel still holds today, or otherwise how to update it. Finally, to enhance the debate, it is appropriate to reflect on the very idea of the Mediterranean as a single sea that is not, from a historical point of view, so ancient. The Mediterranean is an abstraction created by geographers during the nineteenth century, that is, at the height of Europe’s colonial expansion; the history of the term shows us that only then did we begin to use «Mediterranean » as a noun. These preliminary reflections are intended to frame the following texts in a broad historiographical perspective, to which they provide a significant contribution.