East-West to North-South in the Mediterranean

Abstract

The onset of modern history in the sixteenth century coincided with the peaking of the Christian-Islamic East-West confrontation in the Mediterranean and, concurrently, a North-South struggle within Europe. The resulting ascendancy of the innovative North resulted in the subjugation of the old Mediterranean power bases and of the whole region. As the Mediterranean slid into underdevelopment, it became in due course the contesting ground of the Great Powers, whose world interests coincided or clashed with regional interests, while more and more of the region's territory fell under external domination. During the cold war era in particular, the Mediterranean returned to be a major theatre of confrontation between the powers of East and West, that contest intersecting with a widening divide between North and South. The end of the East-West contest has exposed the North-South gulf, and its potential for adversity, for what it is. Does the end of one divide promise to help heal the other, or simply to entrench it further?