Power Issues/Knowledge Issues
For several centuries, Mediterranean coastal area is more densely occupied than hinterland, and numbers many large towns where multiple ethnic and religious communities coexist. In this context of high density and high diversity in limited space, power and knowledge issues – concerning as well territories as networks – were graphically depicted in profusion since the 4th century. These documents may be exploited in several ways: as knowledge means, as intervention or communication tools. These different practices interrelate closely, above all during crisis eras, when the evolution of the social, political or economic order accelerates.
The program addresses all these issues through a cycle of round-table conferences organized in cooperation with several foreign members and the support of the European program RAMSES2. The conferences will bring together researchers working on the iconographic production of different eras: from the papal propaganda during the 16th and 17th centuries, to the Ottoman Reforms of the 19th century, or the setting up of colonial and mandatory powers. The analysis will be based on two hypotheses:
- The documents are always incomplete and biased,
- They depict at the same time reality and their backer point of view.
Each conference will deal with a special topic:
Mapping as a means of appropriation – Islands and coasts as spaces of conquest
Conference scheduled on July 16-17 2007, in Ermoupolis (Syros), in cooperation with the Neohellenic Research Institute of Athens and G. Tolias (NRI).
Between the 15th and 18th centuries, the ‘Insulaires’ (Islands atlases) – literary style both descriptive and visual – constitute a specific Mediterranean editorial product. These publications foretell the opening up of towns and the widening of their horizon. It is a learned style, based on the experimental knowledge of Mediterranean sailors and the humanistic tradition. In the context of the antagonism between the Ottoman Empire and the multiple factions of the Christian world, knowledge about islands and coasts bear tactical issues: maps are depictions intended for politics. The Dalmatians, Spanish, Italians, French, Ottoman, or Portuguese compilers of the ‘Insulaires’build up a network of knowledge transfer in the Mediterranean area. For their political sponsors, these islands inventories are a means of space appropriation, or, at least, of asserting claims by knowledge renewal.
Program of the conference
Session 1– The “Insulaires” and Humanism
Buondelmonti and his Liber Insularum, Benedetta Bessi, John Cabot University, Roma
Enrico Martello et le Liber insularum archipelagi de Cristoforo Buondelmonti, Nathalie Bouloux, François Rabelais University, Tours
Composite Manuscripts of Cristoforo Buondelmontiand Ciriaco d’Ancona, Thodoris Koutsogiannis, Athens University
Session 2 –Islands Mapping
Charting Crete, Christos Zacharakis (Emeritus)
Insular Cartographic Representations from a Numerical point of view, Evangelos Livieratos, Aristote University, Thessalonika
Session 3 – The ‘Insulaires’ and the Art of Navigation
Benedetto Cotrugli « De navigatione », Piero Flachetta, Marciana National Library, Venezia
Piri Reis’ Kitab-i-bahiye, Dimitris Loupis, Harvard University
Late Manuscript Isolarii : Art of Navigation and Travel Literature, Georges Tolias, NHRF, Athens
Session 4 –Power Issues – Knowledge Issues
Représenter les villes siciliennes, Paolo Militello, Catania University
Insularity, Empire and the Visualization of Knowledge in Early Modern Venice, Anastasia Stouraiti, Oxford University
Philisophie(s) de l’Insulaire (XVe-XVIIIe siècles), Franck Lestringant, Sorbonne University, Paris
Conclusion, Jean-Luc Arnaud, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence ; Georges Tolias, NHRF, Athens
Mapping, a tool of intervention. – Towns in the turmoil of the second middle of the 19th century.
Conference scheduled in autumn 2007, in Oran, in cooperation with the Centre de recherché en anthropologie sociale et culturelle d’Oran et S. Benkada (CRASC).
Since the middle of the 19th century, the urbanization of the Mediterranean countries accelerates in a way announcing and preparing today large cities. During a hundred years, whatever the country, in Europe with its technical progress and scientific revolution, in the Ottoman Empire with the Reforms, in recently independent countries, in colonized areas, or in region under Mandates, a same will leads public authorities: the stronger and stronger will to control urban change.
In this context, new tools of intervention are developed, and mapping stands in a good place. The goal is to analyse how these maps at the same time testify of technical necessities and of the approach founding the definition and qualification of much lusted for urban space.
This approach suppresses the common divide between pre-colonial and colonial eras, and between the Empire period and Independences.
Mapping, a means of knowledge and forgery – Coexistences, strong differences in confined proximities.
Conference scheduled in spring 2008, in Alexandria, in cooperation with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Since the first signals of collapse of the Ottoman Empire till the most recent events (parting of Serbia from Montenegro in May 2006), one of the main motive of geo-political reorganization in the Mediterranean basin is the ethnic and religious difference between populations.
Thematic mapping pertaining to this topic began during the second half of the 19th century. The documents are analysed not so much from the point of view of registered knowledge as from the process employed to produce them: definition of spatial units of data registering, of construction of population categories, and of the codes signalling them. These variables testify of the author and/or his sponsor point of view insomuch as they have consequences on the results, and may occult or increase the allotment of some populations. In this way, thematic mapping is a means to legitimate territorial claims and to delimit frontlines. Doubtlessly, it is not new, but this approach was never used concerning the Ottoman Empire, where the approximation of data allows conflicting interpretations. The renewal of populations census since the middle of the 19th century are analysed following the same perspective.
The outcome of these works will be published in two ways. Academic contributions will be published as reports in scientific publications, or as books. Descriptive and visual documents will be included in the web site of the program, The Mediterranean Map Library.
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