Frank B. Gibney
n his pioneering work on the Medi-
terranean world in the age of
Spain's Philip 11, historian Fernand
Braudel claims that the Mediterra-
nean region lacked any unity apart
from that "created the move-ments of men, the relationships they imply and the routes they follow.. . . The whole Mediterranean," Braudel continues, "con- sists of movement in space. Anything enter- ing it-wars, shadows of war, fashions, techniques, epidemics, merchandise light or heavy, precious...