A great deal of world history is imperial history. The Mediterranean in particular was strongly affected by empires across the ages. Some of them, like the Roman, remained “long-lasting reference points for later empire-builders” worldwide, while others, such as the Umayyad caliphate or Habsburg Spain, had a global impact as well. Thus the region seems to be a good starting point to rethink imperial space. Although the Roman Empire has been researched extensively, the ‘new Mediterranean studies’ have neglected the topic of empire so far , and the post-Roman Mediterranean has been no privileged area of investigation for imperial history. Against this background, our workshop compares trans-Mediterranean empires that had a firm basis in the region but also transcended it. Since empires are large political bodies, they are fundamentally challenged by spatial distance. Therefore, we will focus on the imaginary geographies and spatial practices of trans-Mediterranean empires in order to understand how imperial space within and beyond the region was conceptualized, shaped and remembered. We will do this with a threefold aim:

(1) By contrasting distinctions between ‚cores and peripheries‘ or ‚metropoles and colonies‘ that are well established in theories of empire, with alternative forms of political organization such as the ‘municipality’, the ‘commonwealth’, or the ‘nation-state’, we wish to sharpen our understanding of imperial space.
(2) By comparing pre-modern with modern empires, we try to overcome the narrow time range of the ‘new Mediterranean studies’ that often exclude the modern age or relegate responsibility to anthropologists when the latter is concerned.
(3) By focussing on empires that all transcended the region, we wish to intensify the dialogue between Mediterranean and global history.