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322 Alphabet Soup
coherence of the Mediterranean region’ for once and all made a
case which others could cite, and build on, with impunity: 8
It is not only to its author that The Mediterranean has seemed the last
word. When an eminent economic historian of Antiquity wishes to
sum up the Mediterranean environment, whom else should he cite but
Socrates—and Braudel . . . ? Whom else, again, when archaeologists
seek justification for concerted survey projects in the region and
intellectual frameworks within which to locate their discussion of
evolving settlement patterns . . . ?
Mediterranean serials too were inspired by, and relied upon,
Braudel in justifying their endeavours, as noted below; there
exists the strong impression of a torch being passed. Yet the
chronology here is also sadly ironic: Braudel died in 1985, as did
Shlomo Goitein, author of A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish
Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of
the Cairo Geniza (1967–93)—at just about the time Mediterranean
serials started to appear in earnest. With Rostovtzeff and
Pirenne, these two form half of Horden and Purcell’s quartet of
Mediterranean heroes, ‘Four Men in a Boat’. 9 The very first
issue of the Mediterranean Historical Review, for example, carried
an appreciation of the latter (‘Shlomo Dov Goitein, 1900–
1985: A Mediterranean Scholar’); its frontispiece read: ‘Fernand
Braudel 1902–1985’.
3. where, who, and in whose language?
In tracing the homes of these journals (both editorial and press,
the two—increasingly—need not be identical), we can start
from the farthest peripheries (see Table 13.1). To begin in the
western hemisphere, serials based in North America are relatively
few in number. Mediterranean Studies: The Journal of the
Mediterranean Studies Association is supported by a small consortium
of American universities (principally their programmes
in Medieval and Renaissance Studies) and now co-published in
the United States and the United Kingdom; Scripta Mediterranea
is published by the Canadian Institute for Mediterranean
Studies, with editors currently located at the University of
8 CS 40.
9 CS 31–9.