Voices from the South have been strikingly absent in the modern historiography of the Mediterranean. Existing research has foregrounded above all European perspectives, creating a methodological bias that left local perceptions and responses to Western imperial aspirations unattended. Responding to this gap the DFG funded research network “The Modern Mediterranean: Dynamics of a World Region 1800 / 2000” (ModMed) brought together a group of European and Middle Eastern historians to discuss how Maghrebi and Mashriqi actors made sense of the Mediterranean at the turn of the 19th and 20th century – marked by multiple, overlapping processes of colonization and decolonization, urbanization, the integration of their regions into an economic world market and the emergence of nation-states.1

Stretched over one and a half days, the main aim of the workshop was to find out how the concept of the Mediterranean was mobilized or challenged during this period of major geopolitical transformation, shaping discourses of emerging nationalisms, borders and identity politics. As JASMIN DAAM (Kassel) and ESTHER MÖLLER (Mainz) highlighted in the introduction to the workshop, the time period was chosen to examine how global, regional and national developments influenced the discourses and practices of Arab, Ottoman and Zionist intellectuals, but also merchants, administrators and migrants. The event was the 4th in a series of workshops organized by the ModMed-Network. The series will result in a number of publications aimed at presenting a more integrated historiography of the modern constitution of the Mediterranean and the conflicting ideas of belonging it articulates and represents, as MANUEL BORUTTA (Konstanz) pointed out.

The opening keynote by CYRUS SCHAYEGH (Geneva) took the changing relations between the post-Ottoman Middle East and Eastern Europe (late 19th to late 20th century) as a starting point to raise wider methodological questions for analyzing regional dynamics at a moment of radical uncertainty. How do we account for the fact that multiple (dis)entanglements coexist yet differ in intensity, type and degree? Do we and should we foreground some, but not others? And, if so, what rationales and frameworks can we draw on to justify our selective reading and choice? Is an overall, holistic picture possible and even necessary?

The keynote laid out a suitable framework for the papers and discussions to follow. CHRISTIAN TAOUTEL (Beirut) started the morning panel “Discourses on Modernity in the Arab World” with an analysis of ‘Phoenicianism’ – the highly contested recourse to Phoenician roots and heritage – in the nationalist discourse of the Maronites in Lebanon. Triggered by the fear of Islam and a refusal of an Arab identity, prominent figures, such as the historian Tanios Chidiac, the poet Said Akl, the writer Charles Corm as well as various Lebanese politicians endorsed Phoenicianism to construct a sense of distinctiveness and origins in the midst of competing secular and religious nationalisms whose political and cultural purchase still resonates today. The fact that the existence of a Phoenician civilization remains highly disputed did not diminish the strategic significance of Phoenicianism as founding myth for a minority that perceived itself continuously under threat. The second paper by MANFRED SING (Mainz) offered a comparative perspective that interrogated the use of Mediterraneanism among Arab intellectuals. Drawing on the writings of Ṭahṭāwī, Khayr al-Dīn al-Tūnisī (1820–1890), Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq (1804–1887), Salāma Mūsā (1887–1958), Ṭāhā Ḥusayn (1889–1973), Sāmī al-Kayyālī (1898– 1972), ʿAlī al-Duʿājī (1090–1949), and Mohammed Arkoun (1928–2010), Sing identified three distinct tendencies that roughly correlate to chronological stages in the use of Mediterraneanism: first, its function as a discursive strategy for countering European (colonial) supremacy in the nineteenth century, second, its use as a conceptual trope for imagining a modern nation in the early twentieth century, and thirdly, its efficacy as a conceptual resource for overcoming culturalist binaries such as Europe/Arab or West/Islam since the 1970s. Against this backdrop, Sing concluded that although the centrality of the Mediterranean in the modern Arab imagination remains highly contested, its various conceptions and uses played a central role in Arab debates on modernity. Indeed, the quest for an Arab modernity and the modern nation-state was often directly linked with debates about the centrality of the Mediterranean as a shared reference for the construction of modern political projects among secular nationalists, pan-Arabists and (Pan)Islamists.

The panel closed with a conceptually stimulating yet provocative intervention by STEFAN VOGT (Frankfurt am Main) who interrogated the ambivalent role of Orientalism in the political discourse of German Zionism. Revisiting the work of Martin Buber and Hans Kohn through a post-colonial framework – Stewart Hall’s notion of identity as positioning and Homi Bhaba’s ‘in-between spaces’, Vogt suggested that German Jewish intellectuals positively identified with essentializing ideas of the Orient describing it as a more sensual and holistic culture in tune with the environment, to position themselves against the abstract formalism of German rationality. In doing so, Vogt suggested, German Zionists appropriated colonialist ideas and politics to liberate Jews from their status as colonized minority in Europe, while at the same time offering themselves as mediators between ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’. This ambivalent move, he concluded, enabled Zionist intellectuals to affirm a sense of agency in the face of antisemitic attacks and prosecution and to reclaim control over the construction of Jewish identity in an increasingly hostile German society.

Vogt’s methodology of drawing on postcolonial theory to read subversive tendencies into a colonialist discourse and political project that ended up legitimating the forced dispossession of Palestine did not go uncontested. He openly acknowledged the limits of his analysis as it covered only to a small spectrum of German Zionist voices, whose alternative vision of Jewish nationalism remained a mere theoretical project. But readers familiar with the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jacqueline Rose may still wonder why no female voices were included in the discussion. Bringing in Arendt’s response to Buber would have allowed to show that the idea of an anti-colonial German Zionism was highly controversial at its time, in particular amongst philosophers such as Arendt, who early on warned about Zionism’s political dangers and effects.

The afternoon panel, “Anchoring Space: Constructions of Belonging”, focused on everyday life as critical site for negotiating senses of belonging and the emerging order of Mediterranean nation-states. The session opened with a mapping of the mutual perceptions of center-periphery relations between Eastern European Muslims and Europe in Habsburg Bosnia by DIRK DIEKS (Jena). Drawing on examples from the Muslim press in Habsburg Bosnia, Dierks showed how the discourse of Muslim intellectuals inversed Eurocentric conceptions that depicted the non-European world as wither an area of imperial expansion or as a foil for exoticized fantasies. Addressing primarily the Arabic-speaking population of the Mediterranean, the discussion of war events positioned the Muslim world at the center of history and world-making, anchoring senses of commonality in a mental geography of spiritual and cultural belonging, a perceived scope of action and the lived experience of social exchange.

Second in line was JASMIN DAAM’S (Kassel) discussion of the circulation of postcards during the early French Mandate period. Daam highlighted the critical relevance of tourism in the formation of a new spatial order for the emerging post-Ottoman states. Counter to existing research that depicts tourism largely as a consequence of imperial expansion or as a means of legitimizing colonial rule, Daam suggested that the expansion of travel and the popularity of postcards not only opened up new lines of connectivity, personal mobility and connections, but enabled multiple actors beyond the political, diplomatic and intellectual elites to participate in shaping these connections and creating new ones. Her close readings of commercial images travelling from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine to Europe, the Americas but also neighboring Arab countries brought into view how members of the educated urban middle class contested visions and ambitions of the great powers from within the colonial framework and contributed to the integration of the emerging Arab nation-states in the international order. The emerging market of tourism, in this sense, provided a critical platform for contesting and overcoming disparaging Orientalist representations of the region, establishing commercial photography as critical force in shaping the spatial structure of the region during the transition from the imperial age to an order of nation-states.

The final paper by JOSEPH RUSTOM (Berlin) shifted the attention to the circulation of religious architectures in the construction of national identity among the Armenian diaspora in Aleppo and Beirut. Armenian churches, Rustom suggested, had little in common with the religious architecture of Asia minor, but drew on centrally planned dome structures and medieval forms of the Caucasus that explicitly distinguished Armenian places of worship from the Basilica plan prevalent in cities across the Mediterranean. Rustom read this as an attempt of the Armenian diaspora to clearly distance itself from European influences in the heated nationalist debate following the trauma of forced exile. It enabled the survivors of the 1915 genocide to construct a renewed sense of authenticity and ‘Armenianness’ at a moment when their very existence as nation and culture was put under threat. The day ended with a presentation of contemporary perspectives on the Mediterranean by three celebrated Lebanese artists – the photographer Chaza Charafeddine, the writer Charif Majdalani, and the filmmaker Mounira al-Solh – whose work critically engages with the relevance and meaning of the Mediterranean in the 21st century.

SELIM DERINGLI (Beirut) started the second day with an account on late Ottoman policies to contain out-migration from Mount Lebanon and the surrounding coastal areas. Worried by the rapid population decline and the resulting reduction of tax revenues, a series of punitive measures were introduced that made it more difficult for Ottoman citizens to acquire travel permits and that required the payment of a guarantor’s fees to ensure the travelers return. These fees effectively held the guarantors hostage to the aspirations of fellow citizens, conscripting them into an informal regime of surveillance and migration control. Diplomatic representatives of the Ottoman government abroad were equally conscripted into the new policy of migration control. In some cases as far as Cuba, diplomats requested the names of all those who ‘illegally’ resettled outside the Empire, in order to put pressure on their relatives back home and convince them to come back. KAMEL DORAÏ (Beirut) followed up with a discussion of the relation between refugee movements and place-making, highlighting the crucial contribution of migrant population and refugee camps to the urban fabric of Jordan and Lebanon. Taking the long-term presence of Palestinian refugee camps in both countries as an example, Doraï outlined the critical function of the camps for marginalized and low-income groups as well as informal workers and businesses, who make up a large segment of Mediterranean urban populations. In this context the de facto extra-territorial and extra-legal status of the camps cannot be reduced to urban ghettos or sites of spatial exclusion, Doraï argued, but rather need to be seen as vibrant and enabling environments, catering to the needs of those forced to exist in the margins of the state. The camp and its spill-overs into surrounding urban areas provide a critical hub for rebuilding solidarity networks and provide affordable housing and employment for new generations of migrants flocking into regional metropoles. Some will continue their urban trajectories outside the camps as soon as they have succeeded in stabilizing their legal situation or improving their economic condition. Others will stay. These urban trajectories are similar to those analysed in the work of the Chicago School on the settlement neighbourhoods of European immigrants in North American cities. The camp and its surroundings represent a step in the urban trajectory of refugees and migrants. It represents an entry point into the city by its margins.

In the final discussions, all participants agreed that it has been very fruitful to question the perception of the Mediterranean by its Southern inhabitants. While not all Arab, Ottoman or Zionist intellectuals did consider it as their central category of reflection, the Mediterranean definitely played a crucial role for the social and cultural practices experiences of the inhabitants of this region.

Conference Overview:

Introduction:
Birgit Schäbler (OIB Beirut), Manuel Borutta (Konstanz), Jasmin Daam (Kassel), Esther Möller (Mainz)

Keynote Lecture
Cyrus Schayegh (Geneva): Scale: Three Conceptual Reflections, with Special Reference to the Middle East

Panel 1: Bridging the Gap: Discourses on Modernity in the Arab World
Chair: Nora Lafi (ZMO Berlin)

Christian Taoutel (USJ Beirut): The Theory of Phoenicianism

Manfred Sing (IEG Mainz): Mediterranean Entanglements and Arab Reflections about them

Stefan Vogt (Frankfurt am Main): A Bridge over the Mediterranean: German Zionist Self-Conception as Mediators between the “Orient” and the “West”

Panel 2: Anchoring Space: Constructions of Belonging
Chair: Youssef Mouawad

Dennis Dierks (Jena, SPP Transottomanica): Mapping the umma: Mutual Perceptions of the (Arab) Centre and the (European) Periphery before WWI”

Jasmin Daam (Kassel): Greetings from the Southern Shore: Postcards and Spaces of Belonging in the Eastern Mediterranean

Joseph Rustom (Houshamadyan - UOB): Reconstructing an Armenian Identity through Religious Architecture in Lebanon and Syria (1923-1960)

Evening Salon: Living in the Mediterranean: Mobilities and Performances in and across Lebanon
Artist presentations by Chaza Charafeddine (Beirut), Charif Majdalani (USJ Beirut), Mounira al-Solh (Beirut/Amsterdam).

Panel 3: Shaping Seascapes: The Mediterranean as Connection and Boundary
Chair: Malte Fuhrmann (ZMO Berlin)

Selim Deringil (LAU Beirut): Criminalizing Immigration: Ottoman Attempts to Prevent Out Migration from Mount Lebanon in the late 19th Century

Kamel Doraï (Ifpo Beirut): Migration, Mobility, Asylum and Place Making in the Middle East

Final Discussion: Is there an “Other” Mediterranean?

Fieldtrip: Tripoli’s Global Modernity: The Mediterranean and Beyond
Excursion for the Network Members

Note:
1 For further informations on the DFG-Network “The Modern Mediterranean: Dynamics of a World Region 1800 / 2000” (ModMed), see https://modernmediterranean.net/ (11.11.2019).