David Abulafia

A SUNDAY TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, THE TIMES AND BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR From the award-winning author of The Great Sea, a magnificent new global history of the oceans and of humankind's relationship with the sea For most of human history, the seas and oceans have been the main means of long-distance trade and communication between peoples - for the spread of ideas and religion as well as commerce. This book traces the history of human movement and interaction around and across the world's greatest bodies of water, charting our relationship with the oceans from the time of the first voyagers. David Abulafia begins with the earliest of seafaring societies - the Polynesians of the Pacific, the possessors of intuitive navigational skills long before the invention of the compass, who by the first century were trading between their far-flung islands. By the seventh century, trading routes stretched from the coasts of Arabia and Africa to southern China and Japan, bringing together the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific and linking half the world through the international spice trade. In the Atlantic, centuries before the little kingdom of Portugal carved out its powerful, seaborne empire, many peoples sought new lands across the sea - the Bretons, the Frisians and, most notably, the Vikings, now known to be the first Europeans to reach North America. As Portuguese supremacy dwindled in the late sixteenth century, the Spanish, the Dutch and then the British each successively ruled the waves. Following merchants, explorers, pirates, cartographers and travellers in their quests for spices, gold, ivory, slaves, lands for settlement and knowledge of what lay beyond, Abulafia has created an extraordinary narrative of humanity and the oceans. From the earliest forays of peoples in hand-hewn canoes through uncharted waters to the routes now taken daily by supertankers in their thousands, The Boundless Sea shows how maritime networks came to form a continuum of interaction and interconnection across the globe: 90 per cent of global trade is still conducted by sea. This is history of the grandest scale and scope, and from a bracingly different perspective - not, as in most global histories, from the land, but from the boundless seas.

A Human History of the Oceans

The Boundless Sea

For over three thousand years, the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the great centres of civilization. David Abulafia's The Great Sea is the first complete history of the Mediterranean, from the erection of temples on Malta around 3500 BC to modern tourism. Ranging across time and the whole extraordinary space of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Jaffa, Genoa to Tunis, and bringing to life pilgrims, pirates, sultans and naval commanders, this is the story of the sea that has shaped much of world history.

A Human History of the Mediterranean

The Great Sea

Boundless Sea

Das unendliche Meer - Die große Weltgeschichte der Ozeane

Great Sea

Akdeniz’de insanlık tarihi

Büyük deniz

Italy in the Central Middle Ages

Eine überraschende Geschichte der Welt - nicht vom Land, sondern vom Meer aus erzählt: In diesem wunderschön gestalteten Buch beschreibt der Historiker David Abulafia, wie die Weltmeere seit Urzeiten den Austausch ferner Völker ermögllichten und damit die Geschicke der Menschen bestimmten. Waren, Ideen oder Religionen verbreiteten sich immer auch auf dem Seeweg. Schiffe querten die Ozeane schon in der Antike, heute transportieren riesige Containerschiffe Waren von einem Kontinent zum anderen. Abulafia erzählt von Händlern und Abenteurern, Piraten und Kartographen, getrieben von der Jagd nach Gewürzen, Gold oder Sklaven oder auf der Suche nach neuen Siedlungsmöglichkeiten oder fremdem Wissen. Europa ist ein Kontinent unter anderen, wir reisen mit den Seefahrern von den Küsten Arabiens nach China und Japan, vom Indischen Ozean über den Atlantik bis an die Mittelmeerküsten Europas und in das arktische Meer. Ein riesiges Panorama entfaltet sich, eine Vielfalt an Verbindungen und Netzwerken rund um den Globus, denn das Meer ist unendlich und grenzenlos. Ein Buch für Weltentdecker und alle, die sich fragen, was hinter dem Horizont liegt. Ausgezeichnet als »Wissenschaftsbuch des Jahres 2022« in der Kategorie Geistes-, Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften.

Das unendliche Meer – Die große Weltgeschichte der Ozeane

relazioni economiche fra il regno normanno di Sicilia e i comuni settentrionali

Le due Italie

Italy, Sicily, and the Mediterranean, 1100-1400

University Lecturer in History David Abulafia

A. Abulafia

A study of the economic development in twelfth-century Italy of Sicily and the maritime ports.

Economic Relations Between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes

The Two Italies

The French invasion of Italy under Charles VIII in 1494-95 has long been seen as inaugurating a new and wretched era in Italian history. The present volume, the work of an international team of contributors, seeks to question that assumption by focusing anew on the intricate politics of Renaissance Italy and the long history of Angevin attempts to impose their rule in southern Italy. It was later invasions, it is argued, that did most to reshape the politics of the Italian peninsula. These studies also look at social and economic effects of the French invasion, as well as its cultural aspects, not least the impact of Renaissance culture in France itself. Combining survey papers and research articles, this volume presents a new introduction to the history of late 15th-century Italy. The appendix, listing the Ilardi collection of microfilms, will also provide an invaluable guide to the diplomatic history of the era.

Antecedents and Effects

The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–95

This work questions the assumption that the French invasion of Italy under Charles VIII in 1494-95 inaugurated a new and wretched era in Italian history. It focuses anew on the intricate politics of Renaissance Italy and the long history of Angevin attempts to impose their rule in Southern Italy.

The French Descent Into Renaissance Italy, 1494-95

Il grande mare. Storia del Mediterraneo

Miri Rubin

Michael J. Franklin

This volume of essays is intended as a tribute to the distinguished medieval historian Christopher Brooke. It addresses new questions in areas of medieval history which Professor Brooke has made his own: urban life and religious life. The fourteen essays explore the coexistence of religious ideas and ecclesiastical institutions with urban practices and townspeople. They span five hundred years of the history of western Christendom, ranging from Magdeburg to Majorca, and from Cambridge to Cluny. The essays break new ground in a number of areas in medieval history: in economic history, the history of ideas, and the history of religious institutions. The contributors have been attuned throughout to the complex interactions of groups and ideas within urban space. The book also contains a bibliography of Christopher Brooke's writings and an appreciation of his work.

Essays in Honour of Christopher Brooke

Church and City, 1000-1500

From the 12th century, merchants from north Italian and southern French towns were able to take advantage of Christian conquests in Italy, Sicily and the Levant to dominate the markets of those regions and of North Africa. This book examines the impact of this combination of conquest and trade.

Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean, 1100-1500

Studies in Honour of David Abulafia

Mediterranean Reflections

Abulafia, in this collection of previously published essays (in English, Spanish, and Italian), focuses on the ways in which political developments and economic ones influence one another. The essays consider trade between Christians and Muslims in the 12th century, particularly between Spain and North Africa, in the Crusader States, the city of Ancona, Italy, and in the trade of the industrial arts. Subsequent sections consider the Italians' and Iberians' contribution to trade in the 13th through 15th centuries; the Kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, with an essay on the place in these kingdoms of Jews and Muslims; and the political convulsions that followed the War of the Sicilian Vespers.

Mediterranean Encounters, Economic, Religious, Political, 1100-1550

Nora Berend

In recent years, the 'medieval frontier' has been the subject of extensive research. But the term has been understood in many different ways: political boundaries; fuzzy lines across which trade, religions and ideas cross; attitudes to other peoples and their customs. This book draws attention to the differences between the medieval and modern understanding of frontiers, questioning the traditional use of the concepts of 'frontier' and 'frontier society'. It contributes to the understanding of physical boundaries as well as metaphorical and ideological frontiers, thus providing a background to present-day issues of political and cultural delimitation. In a major introduction, David Abulafia analyses these various ambiguous meanings of the term 'frontier', in political, cultural and religious settings. The articles that follow span Europe from the Baltic to Iberia, from the Canary Islands to central Europe, Byzantium and the Crusader states. The authors ask what was perceived as a frontier during the Middle Ages? What was not seen as a frontier, despite the usage in modern scholarship? The articles focus on a number of themes to elucidate these two main questions. One is medieval ideology. This includes the analysis of medieval formulations of what frontiers should be and how rulers had a duty to defend and/or extend the frontiers; how frontiers were defined (often in a different way in rhetorical-ideological formulations than in practice); and how in certain areas frontier ideologies were created. The other main topic is the emergence of frontiers, how medieval people created frontiers to delimit areas, how they understood and described frontiers. The third theme is that of encounters, and a questioning of medieval attitudes to such encounters. To what extent did medieval observers see a frontier between themselves and other groups, and how does real interaction compare with ideological or narrative formulations of such interaction?

Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Sicily, King of Jerusalem, has, since his death in 1250, enjoyed a reputation as one of the most remarkable monarchs in the history of Europe. His wide cultural tastes, his apparent tolerance of Jews and Muslims, his defiance of the papacy, and his supposed aim of creating a new, secular world order make him a figure especially attractive to contemporary historians. But as David Abulafia shows in this powerfully written biography, Frederick was much less tolerant and far-sighted in his cultural, religious, and political ambitions than is generally thought. Here, Frederick is revealed as the thorough traditionalist he really was: a man who espoused the same principles of government as his twelfth-century predecessors, an ardent leader of the Crusades, and a king as willing to make a deal with Rome as any other ruler in medieval Europe. Frederick's realm was vast. Besides ruling the region of Europe that encompasses modern Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, eastern France, and northern Italy, he also inherited the Kingdom of Sicily and parts of the Mediterranean that include what are now Israel, Lebanon, Malta, and Cyprus. In addition, his Teutonic knights conquered the present-day Baltic States, and he even won influence along the coasts of Tunisia. Abulafia is the first to place Frederick in the wider historical context his enormous empire demands. Frederick's reign, Abulafia clearly shows, marked the climax of the power struggle between the medieval popes and the Holy Roman Emperors, and the book stresses Frederick's steadfast dedication to the task of preserving both dynasty and empire. Through the course of this rich, groundbreaking narrative, Frederick emerges as less of the innovator than he is usually portrayed. Rather than instituting a centralized autocracy, he was content to guarantee the continued existence of the customary style of government in each area he ruled: in Sicily he appeared a mighty despot, but in Germany he placed his trust in regional princes, and never dreamed of usurping their power. Abulafia shows that this pragmatism helped bring about the eventual transformation of medieval Europe into modern nation-states. The book also sheds new light on the aims of Frederick in Italy and the Near East, and concentrates as well on the last fifteen years of the Emperor's life, a period until now little understood. In addition, Abulfia has mined the papal registers in the Secret Archive of the Vatican to provide a new interpretation of Frederick's relations with the papacy. And his attention to Frederick's register of documents from 1239-40--a collection hitherto neglected--has yielded new insights into the cultural life of the German court. In the end, a fresh and fascinating picture develops of the most enigmatic of German rulers, a man whose accomplishments have been grossly distorted over the centuries.

David Abulafia

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