The “Geographical Mission”: Europe, the Mediterranean, Islam and the World

This talk explores the crucial spatial dimension of the modern order of things, by focusing on the emergence of a distinctly geographical concept of Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. It traces the becoming of Europe as an organic region of the globe – alongside the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Islamic world, and other geographical entities, in accordance with the epistemic conditions of the newly institutionalized disciplines of geography and history. 

Still too often, Europe is taken for granted as a natural, even organic region of the world. It is not; like other geographical spaces, it had first to be produced as a scientific object. The modern geographical vision of Europe was pegged from the start to a particular idea of the maritime (the sea in general and the Mediterranean Sea in particular) and to the othering of Muslims (now imagined not only as different but foreign: Asiatic, Semitic). The geohistoricist pivot of modern discourse is encapsulated in an astounding expression penned by Fernand Braudel: the idea of the “geographical mission” inherent in particular spaces. And this logic contributed in no small way to determining the tragic destiny of the once pluri-continental and multireligious Ottoman lands.

Speaker

Alexis Norman Wick (Koç University)

Organiser

School of History, Religion and Philosophies, SOAS History Seminar Series.

Image credit: The Walters Art Museum Online Collection, map of the Eastern Mediterranean