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THE BOUNDLESS SEA Chapter 10    TIDE, BEACH AND BACKWASH                   The Place of Maritime Histories Haec medium terries circumdat linea pontum / atque his undarum tractum constringit harenis. (This line, of coastwise journeying, circumscribes the sea in the heart of the lands, shutting the expanse of the waves with its beaches. (1) 1. Introductory The aim of this chapter is precisely that of the gathering at which its oral precursor was read: to investigate the nature and potential of “the new thalassography” as a scholarly initiative, while it is indeed still relatively new. “Thalassography” has hitherto been a maritime mirroring of geography, in that word’s more literal meaning of the description of the land – a more local subdivision of oceano- graphy. That more technical usage has become a little more familiar over the last years as a keyword in a geographically deterministic Grand Theory (2). Rather, just as “geography” long ago escaped from disciplinary boun- daries and became notable for being a hard-to-classify crossover zone of methods from many pats of the sciences and the humanities, so “thalassography” too has recently come to seem suitable vehicle for the fertile intermingling of scholarly traditions (3). It is a stimulatingly versatile idea, which it would be perverse to attempt to claim for any one tradition, but this paper relates primarily to its historical mani- festation. It offers a number of particular enticements to the historian who is concerned with how more local histories engage with the history of everything, universal history, “histoire à très grande échelle”, not least because of its emphasis on the integration of history with its neighboring disciplines.(4) (…) 1 Manilius, Astronomica 4.628. 2 D. Cosandey, Le secret de l'Occident: vers une théorie générale du progrés scientifique (Flammarion 2007). 3 E.Peters used the term “thalassology” of CS in “Quid nobis cum pelago? The New Thalassology and the Economic History of Europe, Journal of Interdisciplianry History, 34 (2003), 49-61, providing a cue for the title of our the Mediterrananean and the “New Thalassology”, this volume. The need to differentiate the new frame from Cosandey’s work might recommend this label over “Thalassography”, but the precise name of itself matters little. About the Authors: Peregrine Horden is Professor of Medieval History at Royal Holloway, University of London, and an Extraordinary Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He co-edited with Sharon Kinoshita A Companion to Mediterranean History (2014). Nicholas Purcell is Camden Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford and Fellow of Brasenose College. He is co-author, with P.Horden, of the preceding book The Corrupting Sea (2000). He has also written on the social and economic history of Rome and Italy. ![]() |
Créé: 14 avr 2021 Terminé: 17 avr 2021
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