Norwich never disappoints. Always entertaining and enlightening.The drama, personalities and above all the blood that was poured out over this region was traversed with his usual panache and wit. It has peaked my interest in the Venetian - Ottoman wars for the Greek islands.

Aunque los saltos temporales pierden un poco al lector, es una historia contada con una lucidez y amenidad excelente.

Skips remarkably quickly over the ancient world, but settles down once it gets to post-Roman Italy, which is clearly Norwich's focus.

Sve u svemu, zgodna sinteza povijesti mediterana, od Minojaca do završetka prvog svjetskog rata. malo eurocentrična, ali puna zanimljivih anegdota i faktoida koji se ne uče u školi.

An interesting history without actually being completely great. But certainly I liked it.

A good read about the history of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean, but not so much is told about the sea itself: who controlled it, what ships sailed there, what goods they carried are topics little mentioned.

2019, #7a

A bouncy little narrative that comes in fairly digestible chunks. I read this long ago and noticed a lot more of the elisions and gossipiness this time around, at least in the chapters where I actually know something about the topic, but as long as you remember that you’re reading this for fun, it can be quite enjoyable.

Excellent comprehensive history, punctuated w/ entertainingly droll asides and tidbits from the lives of the kings and queens and generals around all the wars & political maneuvering. I wouldn't have minded one or two more maps (Greece is a little neglected), but overall, very readable coverage of an immense sweep of history.

Overall, I enjoyed this readable history of the Mediterranean Sea which starts with Rome and ends with WWI. Occasionally, I would be distracted by the eurocentric perspective (e.g. portrayal of the Arabs, Turks). Also, it goes into a great deal of detail of battles which for me is yawn territory. And no maps!!!! Sometimes I got confused or couldn't understand the geopolitical issues because of the lack of maps. For example, I am pretty ignorant of southeastern Europe geography so discussions of Greece and the Balkan peninsula were challenging to read and understand.

This book was recommended to me by one of the 4 people who I sailed with from Athens to Malta in 2017. It provided lots of context on what we were experiencing.

Summary ChatGPT

"The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean" is a comprehensive historical work written by John Julius Norwich and published in 2006. The book provides a detailed account of the history of the Mediterranean region, from ancient times to the modern era, highlighting its pivotal role in shaping the world's civilizations.

Summary:

1. Ancient Civilizations: Norwich delves into the origins of Mediterranean civilizations, such as the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans. He explores their cultural, economic, and political contributions, which laid the foundation for the region's significance in world history.

2. Trade and Commerce: The Mediterranean's central location made it a hub for trade and commerce, connecting the East and the West. Norwich explores the development of maritime trade routes, the exchange of goods, and the rise of important trading cities and empires.

3. Religious and Cultural Interactions: Throughout history, the Mediterranean has been a crossroads of different religious and cultural traditions. Norwich examines the interactions between major religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and their impact on the region's history.

4. Conquests and Empires: The Mediterranean has been a stage for numerous conquests and the rise and fall of powerful empires. The book covers the expansion of empires like the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the various Caliphates.

5. Renaissance and Discovery: Norwich explores the Renaissance period and how it was fueled by the rediscovery of ancient texts and ideas from the Mediterranean world. He also discusses the Age of Exploration and the voyages of discovery that opened up new routes and connections with other parts of the world.

6. Conflict and Wars: The Mediterranean has been a theater for numerous wars and conflicts throughout history. Norwich delves into various conflicts, including the Crusades, the Barbary Wars, and the World Wars that affected the region's political landscape.

7. Modern Mediterranean: The book also addresses the modern era, discussing the challenges and transformations faced by the Mediterranean region in the 20th and 21st centuries. It highlights the impact of colonialism, decolonization, and the contemporary geopolitical dynamics in the area.

In "The Middle Sea," John Julius Norwich weaves a captivating narrative of the Mediterranean's rich and diverse history. He brings to life the stories of great civilizations, the rise and fall of empires, and the continuous cultural exchange that has shaped the region's character over millennia. The book offers readers a deep understanding of the Mediterranean's importance in shaping global history and its enduring influence on the world's affairs.

This book is reminiscent of one of those tours where today you visit the Eiffel tower, tomorrow you rush through the treasures of the Hermitage Museum and the following day you find yourself in the outer Hebrides. Having time travelled through several centuries on a whirlwind tour of the history of the Mediterranean, I am now suffering from a severe case of information overload. Don't get me wrong; this book is excellent, but there is a lot of information to process. In places I became more confused than enlightened, simply because of my own lack of knowledge and the sheer volume of information. To be honest, I have managed to only absorb a small fraction of the information presented here. Fortunately John Julius Norwich has written several books which provide more information on specific subjects, which will allow me to focus on those topics of particular interest to me.

Essentially this book is a summary of the history of the Mediterranean starting about 3000BC and continuing to the first half of the twentieth century condensed into 688 pages. Almost anything I say is bound to be inadequate, but here is a listing of the chapters (plus a few miscellaneous tidbits) to give you some idea of what is discussed in this book:
Beginnings
Egyptians, Phoenicians, Crete, Mycenae, Troy, Canaan (Palestine), Babylon, etc.

Ancient Greece
The Golden Age: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
”Aristotle was more than a philosopher; his surviving oeuvre also contains works on ethics, history, science, politics, literary and dramatic criticism, nature, meteorology, dreams and –a particular interest of his –zoology. He was, in short, a polymath –perhaps the first in history. And he left behind him the first true library, a vast collection of manuscripts and maps which was the prototype for Pergamum, Alexandria and all the other great public libraries of antiquity.”
Alexander the Great, Ptolemy, Cleopatra

Rome: The Republic
Carthage, Hannibal, Punic Wars, Sulla, Pompey, Marcus Licinius Crassus, Gaius Julius Caesar, Spartacus, Mark Antony

Rome: The Early Empire
Virgil and Horace - Roman art and literature vs that of the Greeks plus Roman achievements in law, science and engineering
Rome’s golden age and the Emperor Hadrian
Constantine and Constantinople (“When Constantine first set eyes on Byzantium, the city was already nearly a thousand years old.”), Justinian
Goths, Huns, Visigoths and Vandals
The Huns: “For clothing they favoured tunics made from the skins of field mice crudely stitched together. These they wore continuously, without ever removing them, until they dropped off of their own accord. Their home was the saddle; they seldom dismounted, not even to eat or to sleep.”

Islam
The Prophet Mohammed, Charles Martel, Tariq, Abdul-Rahman and his grandson Abdul-Rahman II
”Abdul-Rahman’s later years were a good deal more tranquil. He never succeeded in imposing political unity on Spain, but he was a wise and merciful ruler and a deeply cultivated man. His capital city of Cordoba he transformed, endowing it with a magnificent palace, a famously beautiful garden and –most important of all –with the Mezquita, its great mosque, begun in 785 on the site of the early Christian cathedral, which when completed was the most sumptuous mosque in the world and still stands today.”
The Alhambra Palace complex in Granada, Spain.
”Mathematics and medicine, geography and astronomy and the physical sciences were still deeply mistrusted in the Christian world; in that of Islam, they had been developed to a point unequalled since the days of ancient Greece.”
Adelard of Bath

Medieval Italy
The Lombards
Pepin, King of the Franks
The Papal States
Charlemagne
Invasion of Sicily by North African Arabs
The arrival of the Normans in the south and the de Hauteville family
”In Roger II Europe saw one of the greatest and most colourful rulers of the Middle Ages. Born of an Italian mother, raised in Sicily where – thanks to his father’s principles of total religious toleration – Greek and Saracen mingled on equal footing with Norman and Latin, in appearance a southerner, in temperament an oriental, he had yet inherited all the ambition and energy of his Norman forebears and combined them with a gift for civil administration entirely his own.”
"His supreme monument is the Palatine Chapel, which he built during the 1130s and 1140s on the first floor of the royal palace of Palermo."

The Christian Counter-Attack
The crusades, The Knights of St John and the Templars, Louis VII of France and his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine
Salah ed-Din (Saladin), Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Richard Coeur-deLion of England, Philip Augustus of France, etc.
”Constantinople in the twelfth century was the most intellectually and artistically cultivated metropolis of the world, and the chief repository of Europe’s classical heritage, both Greek and Roman. By its sack, Western civilisation suffered a loss far greater than the sack of Rome by the barbarians in the fifth century – perhaps the most catastrophic single loss in all history.”

The Two Diasporas

Stupor Mundi
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, known as Stupor Mundi
”It was impossible to find a subject which did not interest him. He would spend hours not only in study but in long disputations on religion, philosophy or mathematics."
"The Emperor took full control of criminal justice, instituted a body of itinerant judges acting in his name, curtailed the liberties of the barons, the clergy and the towns, and laid the foundations of a system of firm government paralleled only in England, with similar representation of nobility, churchmen and citizens.”

The End of Outremer
Charles of Anjou
The Sicilian Vespers: ”The French were already hated throughout the Regno, both for the severity of their taxation and for the arrogance of their conduct, and when, on the evening of 30 March, a drunken French sergeant began importuning a Sicilian woman outside the Church of Santo Spirito just as the bells were ringing for vespers, her countrymen’s anger boiled over. The sergeant was set upon by her husband and killed; the murder led to a riot, the riot to a massacre. Two thousand Frenchmen were dead by morning.”

The Close of the Middle Ages
Philip the Fair and the Templars
The Knights Hospitaller of St John
The Black Death
”It was in 1341, only twenty years after Dante’s death, that Petrarch was crowned with the poet’s laurels on the Capitol, but in those twenty years lay all the difference between late medieval scholasticism and the humanism of the Renaissance.”
The Avignon Popes

The Fall of Constantinople
“Cross gave way to Crescent; St Sophia became a mosque; the Byzantine Empire was supplanted by the Ottoman; Constantinople became Istanbul. At twenty-one, Mehmet II had achieved his highest ambition.”

The Catholic Kings and the Italian Adventure
”The Spanish Reconquista was making slow progress, but the salient date for Spain –perhaps one of the most significant dates in all Spanish history –was 17 October 1469, which saw the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon to his cousin Isabella of Castile.”
Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo) of Genoa
Charles VIII of France, Ludovico Sforza of Milan, Girolamo Savonarola, Francesco Gonzaga and the Borgias

The King, The Emperor and the Sultan
King Francis I of France, Charles V Holy Roman Emperor and Suleyman the Great
The Sack of Rome, 1527

Barbary and the Barbarossas

Malta and Cyprus
The siege of Malta
The Venetians and the struggle for Cyprus

Lepanto and the Spanish Conspiracy
”And so Lepanto is remembered as one of the decisive battles of the world, the greatest naval engagement between Actium – fought only some sixty miles away – and Trafalgar.”
The expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain.
The Spanish Conspiracy: ”For some weeks before the appointed day, Spanish soldiers in civilian clothes would be infiltrated in twos and threes into Venice, where they would be secretly armed by Bedmar. Then, when all was in readiness, Osuna’s galleons, flying his own personal standard, would advance up the Adriatic and land an expeditionary force on the Lido, together with a fleet of flat-bottomed barges in which that force would be rowed across the lagoon to the city. The Piazza, Doge’s Palace, Rialto and Arsenal would be seized, their armouries ransacked to provide additional arms for the conspirators and for any Venetians who might be prepared to lend them support. The leading Venetian notables would be killed or held to ransom.”


The remaining chapters are:
Crete and the Peloponnese
The Wars of Succession
The Siege of Gibraltar
The Young Napoleon
Neapolitan Interlude
Egypt After Napoleon
The Settlement of Europe
Freedom for Greece
Mohammed Ali and North Africa
The Quarantotto
Risorgiment
The Queens and the Carlists
Egypt and the Canal
The Balkan Wars
The Great War
The Peace

This book is written in the author's signature chatty style, and there are extensive notes at the end of each chapter. In addition to the bibliography there are maps, family trees and illustrations.

Brilliant history of the mediterranean region. A little brief in its look at classical civilizations but excellent on dark ages and medieval italy, and superb for renaissance through napoleonic times. I particularly enjoyed the sections on the Risorgemento in Italy and the Carlist wars in Spain events which I knew very little about before reading this book.I felt he was harsh on the crusaders and a little soft on churchill but all in all excellent. I've also read his byzantium book which I now intend to reread and can't wait to read his books on medieval Sicilly and the Venetian Republic as his knowledge of and love for these nations shines through in this book.