David Abulafia “The Great Sea. A Human History of the Mediterranean"

"Over nearly 800 pages we follow faiths, sail with fleets, trade with bankers, financiers and merchants, raid with pirates and watch battles and sieges, witness rise and fall cities and migrations of peoples in triumph and tragedy. But at its core it is a human story - exciting, global, bloody, playful - radiating scholarship and a sense of wonder and fun, using the Mediterranean as its medium, its well-travelled waterway." (Financial Times)

Connecting Europe, Asia and Africa, the Mediterranean has been a place where religions, economies and political systems have met, collided, influenced and absorbed each other for millennia. David Aboulafia offers a new perspective, focusing on the sea itself: its practical importance for transport and subsistence; its dynamic role in the rise and fall of empires; and the astonishing cast of characters - sailors, merchants, migrants, pirates, pilgrims - who crossed and re-crossed it.

Interweaving major political and naval events with the ebb and flow of trade, Abulafia explores how commercial competition in the Mediterranean generated both rivalry and partnership, and merchants acted as intermediaries between cultures, trading goods that were as exotic on one side of the sea as they were commonplace on the other.

David Aboulafia - Professor of History Mediterranean at Cambridge University.