La Méditerranée solide : un espace double en construction

Abstract

There exists a space of the solid Mediterranean'. This concept was first proposed by the Annales's co-founder Lucien Febvre in 1944-45, during a course on Europe in the 'longue durée'. The flexible borders of this double space, both conceptual and contextual, remain in construction within the on-going and global reality of the solid Mediterranean's space. The comparative history of European societies promoted during the interwar period by Marc Bloch, the other Annales founder, contributes to the construction of said space. Examining this space allows us to concretely articulate scales of analysis from the local to the global. The article is based on a comparative analysis of two Italian and Spanish cases that appear to be particular and paradigmatic (exceptional normal', Edoardo Grendi) of - respectively - Italy's so-called southern question' (questione meridionale) and the Spanish agrarian question' (cuestion agraria). Thus the article helps to conceptualize the space of the 'Méditerranée solide', marked by the complex and long-term Southern European question. The article compares 'Il Ministro della mala vita' (The Minister of the Corruption, 1910) by historian Gaetano Salvemini and 'Del caciquismo tragico' (On Tragical Caciquism, 1913) by republican journalist Pedro Torres. Through these exceptionally normal' case studies, taken together and explained reciprocally, it is possible to better understand the space of the solid Mediterranean. The social realities of the Spanish 'cuestion agraria' and the Italian 'questione meridionale', as well as the conditions of local historiographical production on such realities are, indeed, a consubstantial part of the European transnational, global space of the solid Mediterranean.