THE PROMISE OF THE PACIFIC
by FvaMk B. Gibney
I n his pioneering work on the Medi- terranean world in the age of Spain's Philip II, historian Fernand Braudel claims that the Mediterra- nean region lacked any unity apart from that "created by 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,...