The Scramble For The Eastern Mediterranean

Over the past few years, the Eastern Mediterranean has become a major hotspot for both natural gas and geopolitical competition. Natural gas discoveries in the last decade have attracted growing interest from regional countries and beyond. However, recent escalations in tensions and outright confrontations suggest that competition goes beyond the scramble for energy. Indeed, natural gas is just one of the factors that contribute to shaping security and geopolitical dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean, which has emerged as a crucial strategic area in the broader Mediterranean and the Middle East.Moving from the analysis of these interconnected factors, this Report examines the strategy and the plethora of interests of regional and international players, as well as the interplay between cooperative and competitive dynamics in the region.What are the geopolitical, security, and energy interests of the countries involved? What are the implications on the regional security context of the moves and policies of regional and international powers?

The Mediterranean, or 'Middle Sea', has long been regarded as the symbolic centre of European civilization. The binding water between Turkey, the Middle East, the trading communities of North Africa, and the European powerhouses Italy, France and Greece, a history of this sea is a new and vital way of understanding the history of the societies which have flourished in the region. The Islands of the Eastern Mediterranean charts the story of the water as both connector and border, and analyses the islands role in world history. Covering Mehmed II's efforts to conquer the old Roman Empire, through to the claims of Rhodes and the role of the Aegean Islands in Ottoman international relations, to the British in Cyprus and the present-day tensions, this book's interconnected essays from leading scholars form a tapestry of knowledge. Together, they represent a new frontier in the way in which we look at sea histories. This will become essential reading for scholars of History, International Relations, Trade and Migration.

Did British, French and Russian gunboats pacify the notoriously corsair-infested waters of the Eastern Mediterranean? This book charts the changing rates and nature of piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean in the nineteenth century. Using Ottoman, Greek and other archival sources, it shows that far from ending with the introduction European powers to the region, piracy continued unabated. The book shows that political reforms and changes in the regional economy caused by the accelerated integration of the Mediterranean into the expanding global economy during the third quarter of the century played a large role in ongoing piracy. It also considers imperial power struggles, ecological phenomena, shifting maritime trade routes, revisions in international maritime law, and changes in the regional and world economy to explain the fluctuations in violence at sea.

List of Contributions -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Ottoman Caesar: Mehmed II's Strategies of Possession, 1453-1481 -- 3. Security or Glory? Some Sixteenth-Century Views on the Necessity of Conquering Rhodes -- 4. The Clash of Rum and Frenk: Orthodox-Catholic Interactions on the Aegean Islands in the Mid-Seventeenth to Mid-Eighteenth Centuries and their Impact in the Ottoman Capital -- 5. Challenging Authority and Transforming Politics: A New Perspective on the Muslim and Non-Muslim Experiences in Ottoman Crete, 1896-97 -- 6. The Minoans, the Ottomans and the British: The Eastern Mediterranean as an Imperial Space -- 7. The Wonderful Adventures of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition: Einar Gjerstad, Erik Sjoqvist, the Swedish Institute in Rome and the Cyprus Expedition -- 8. Looting and Losing the Archaeological Heritage of Cyprus -- 9. The Sea that Binds Us: the EU's Problematic Normative Capacity and the Union for the Mediterranean.

Across the Corrupting Sea: Post-Braudelian Approaches to the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean reframes current discussions of the Mediterranean world by rereading the past with new methodological approaches. The work asks readers to consider how future studies might write histories of the Mediterranean, moving from the larger pan-Mediterranean approaches of The Corrupting Sea towards locally-oriented case studies. Spanning from the Archaic period to the early Middle Ages, contributors engage the pioneering studies of the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel through the use of critical theory, GIS network analysis, and postcolonial cultural inquiries. Scholars from several time periods and disciplines rethink the Mediterranean as a geographic and cultural space shaped by human connectivity and follow the flow of ideas, ships, trade goods and pilgrims along the roads and seascapes that connected the Mediterranean across time and space. The volume thus interrogates key concepts like cabotage, seascapes, deep time, social networks, and connectivity in the light of contemporary archaeological and theoretical advances in order to create new ways of writing more diverse histories of the ancient world that bring together local contexts, literary materials, and archaeological analysis.