Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/28357
Title: Self identity in small states : the 'British' Mediterranean
Other Titles: Islands and enclaves : nationalisms and separatist pressures in island and littoral contexts
Authors: Frendo, Henry
Keywords: Mediterranean Sea -- History
Gibraltar -- History
Malta -- History -- British occupation, 1800-1964
Cyprus -- History
Issue Date: 1993
Publisher: Sterling Publishers
Citation: Frendo, H. (1993). Self identity in small states : the 'British' Mediterranean. In G. W. Trompf (Ed.), Islands and enclaves : nationalisms and separatist pressures in island and littoral contexts (pp. 13-30). New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to what appear to be common or similar problems in a defined region, and to try and understand these problems in relation to more general underlying influences there. The paper also tries to indicate some possible directions in the light of changing conditions. As indicated in the title, the region in question is the Mediterranean. Much as interdisciplinary approaches to historiography exemplified by Femand Braudel have been influential in regarding the Mediterranean as a regional entity, this Sea - largely due perhaps to its very geography - has been perceived in 'wholistic' terms since time immemorial. Greeks from Homer to Herodotus characterize it simply as "The Sea"; in the Old Testament it is the "Great Sea" (mare magnum); and Romans later called it "Our Sea" (mare nostrum), as did others in more recent times. The epithet Mare Mediterraneum literally means "the Sea in the middle of the earth". More pointedly Samuel Johnson wrote that "almost all that which sets us above savages has come to us from the shores of this sea". He means Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian civilization; it is unclear if he was thinking of Islam. By "our" and "us" he means not just English but Europeans. Arnold Toynbee described Europeans categorically enough as "those inhabiters of the northwestern peninsula of the Old World, and of the adjacent islands, who are ecclesiastical subjects or ex-subjects of the Patriarchate of Rome: in other words we mean those Catholic and Protestant Christians who live in the northwestern corner of the Old World."
URI: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar//handle/123456789/28357
ISBN: 8120711181
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Scholarly Works - InsMS

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