Fernand Braudel and the Mediterranean

Abstract

From the steep slopes and sandy beaches that surround its shores, for thousands of years sundry people and races have been drawn to the waters of the Mediterranean - induding, for example, those Mongols who arrived towards the middle of the thirteenth century as the last wave of that human tide that had swept most of Asia and south-eastern Europe. One can, therefore, be indigeneous to the Mediterranean and live there for a number of generations or even centuries: but one can also become naturalized in a short time, from various places of origin, from the three continents that enclose this great Inland Sea. Today fully-fledged seasonal and temporary migrations pour visitors coming from the most far-flung of north European countries. From Lorraine, one of its regions lying between France and Germany, a concurrence of fairly unusual circumstances contrived not only to interest young Fernand Braudel in the Mediterranean but, from 1923, to attract him to live in its very heart. An exceptionally brilliant winner of a nation-wide competition for high school teachers, he was just over twenty when he arrived at Constantine, from where he soon passed to the even more seductive Algiers.