Kommentar

Since the year (1995) in which the Barcelona Process was launched by foreign ministers of the Mediterranean countries in the context of a ‘Euro-Mediterranean Partnership’, the new French curricula stipulate that all cultures belonging to the Mediterranean area in the twelfth century should be treated from a global perspective within the same section of the textbook. They recommend using the notion of a ‘crossroads’ and illustrating this with the help of a map of the Mediterranean area, the reproduction of which is obligatory at the beginning of the chapter (Bréal, map p. 72-73). In the spirit of the new curriculum, which reflects the rise of cultural history, the Bréal textbook presents the Mediterranean area as a ‘zone of contact and conflict’ (p. 71) between Orient and Occident, but also as an ‘area of exchange’ (p. 71) which has given rise to ‘centuries of cultural ties’ between the three major neighbouring Byzantine, Arab and western cultures. In order to illustrate this idea, the author presents (on the same page) a large-scale red and gold photograph of the coronation cloak of the Norman king of Sicily, Rogers II (1105-1154), whose origins lay in the north and whose cultural ties lay in western culture. This cloak, which was woven by Sicilian Arabic artists in Palermo, has an inscription embroidered on it in Arabic, and is dated according to the Mohammedan (528) and Christian (1133) calendars. This highly aesthetic and also very symbolic image of Rogers II’s cloak also features on the cover of the textbook.

This textbook, edited by Garcia Dorel-Ferré, develops these cultural issues even further and, when compared with other textbooks of the same generation, is innovative in its view that the three cultures are united by a ‘shared identity, rooted in the natural geographical space in which [the cultures] are located, which has evolved in the course of history, an urban cosmopolitan culture, a unique way of life’ (p. 70); it further asserts that history, culture and religion are the determinants of this identity’s coherence. The textbook presents the Mediterranean region as the carrier of an identity which can transcend differences without eliminating or denying them. This interpretation echoes the view of the ‘”philosopher of the Mediterranean”’ René Habachi, who wrote in 1986 that ‘Our inland sea is small enough to unite those countries it borders on and big enough to allow each to develop their own particular character’.¹

The focus on the Mediterranean as a trade centre in the Middle Ages, which is prescribed in the curriculum, makes it possible to present the three relevant cultures side by side. It is in this spirit that the authors of the Bréal textbook explain the specific factors on which the coherence of these three cultures is based, while placing emphasis on the mutual influences which result from a shared history in the Mediterranean area. In contrast to the textbooks of the 1980s, which deal with the Occident, the Orient and the Arabic world in separate chapters, while drawing attention to European roots and the contribution made by other cultures to Europe, the textbooks of 1996 underscore the common and simultaneous character of the events described. At a time when Islam is making an ever greater mark on the religious landscape of France and Europe, the textbook discourse aims to remind future citizens of the historical and cultural common ground which, over and above their differences, has united western and oriental peoples since antiquity.

In these new textbooks, Eurocentrism is not as clearly pronounced as the title of the Bréal textbook suggests. It is, however, constantly present, as shown by the choice of the twelfth century as the main period to be studied in the curriculum of the Seconde, a period in which ‘victorious Europe’ tended to make its mark in the Mediterranean area, and in which the golden age of Arabic culture had already ended (the golden age of Arabic culture, its ‘classical’ age, in fact took place between the seventh and tenth centuries). Hence the third section of the Bréal textbook starts with the assertion that the Occident in the twelfth century was a ‘rising’ power, whereas the Orient was ‘increasingly divided and growing weaker’ (p. 71).

The remaining part of the introduction enquires into the identity of Europe. On the level of the continent as a whole, European culture is presented as the legacy of various influences dating from the time of ‘Greco-Roman antiquity’ (p. 72) and of the Middle Ages, when the Mediterranean area was the centre of the civilised world. For modern Europe, this shared heritage is the source of both unity and diversity because, as the author states, ‘The Christian western world […] which extends as far as the North Sea, is Mediterranean only in its southern part’ (p. 82). One of the questions which arises as a result concerns the ‘Germanic components’ (p. 82) of European culture.

Maguelone Nouvel-Kirschleger

¹ Habachi, René, Pour une „Histoire de la Méditerranée“, in: Historiens & Géographes 75 (1985/86), no. 308, p. 925.

Bibliography:

Bouton, Pierre; Maurer, Bruno; Remaoun, Hassan (eds.), La Méditerranée des Méditerranéens à travers leurs manuels scolaires, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2012.

Habachi, René, Pour une „Histoire de la Méditerranée“, in : Historiens & Géographes 75 (1985/86), no. 308.

Hassani Idrissi, Mostafa (ed.), Méditerranée : une histoire à partager, Montrouge, Bayard, 2013.