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Four Years of Corruption 365
Mediterranean history would be falsified if such examples could
be hugely multiplied instead of clearly constituting exceptions.
There are also places within the region that may form more
lasting exceptions to our connective and fragmented world.
Once again a way of falsifying our picture would be to demonstrate
that they are too numerous and widespread to be seen as
exceptions. We have been taken to task by scholars of postcolonial
disposition for failing to listen hard enough for the
suppressed, subaltern voices of those excluded from the benefits
of Mediterranean interaction. 30 Parts of the interior of prehistoric
Spain are given as an instance of those who were not
‘well connected’. This may be true, and certain kinds of history
may own ethical obligations to give prominence to such isolated
histories. But we should note first that connectedness can be
very hard to assess. Take a set of studies of the Jebel Hawran,
the mountainous tract on the fringes of the desert south of
Damascus, in which both the Roman and the modern phases
of occupation have been explored. The Hawrani strain of triticum
durum, very drought-resistant and of the highest quality,
was exported to southern Europe on a considerable scale in the
nineteenth century; but ‘even when export was booming, the
bulk of production was nevertheless consumed in Hawran’. 31
Nearby is the strange igneous landscape of the lava flows of the
Lajā, a natural labyrinth which was the normal home of brigands;
here also, the local cereal farmers were apt to withdraw as
a form of resistance to the government which depended on their
produce, especially for feeding the Haj. 32 This ‘definite place’
30 Michael Dietler, at a conference at the University of Chicago in 2002; see
also Keenan. By contrast, Driessen 529 credits us with a subaltern perspective
because of our concern with the small producer and the caboteur. It is said (by
Keenan 93–4) that our theorizing of the structures of slavery seems inhuman.
But we are investigating the rationale of those who manage microecologies,
and fail to see how else we can integrate the phenomenon into the very much
wider picture that we seek.
31 L. S. Schilcher, ‘The Hawran in Late Roman and Ottoman Times:
Three Models for Comparative Research’, in D. Panzac (ed.), Histoire économique
et sociale de l’Empire Ottoman et de la Turquie (1326–1960): actes du
sixième congrés international tenu à Aix-en-Provence du 1er au 4 juillet 1992
(Paris, 1995), 705–17 at 707, 715.
32 N. N. Lewis, ‘The Lajā in the Last Century of Ottoman Rule’, in Panzac
(ed.), Histoire économique et sociale de l’Empire Ottoman, 631–40 at 633–6.