A Sea Change in the Mediterranean Connections. The Fall of Saharan Networks (Eighteenth-Twenteenth Century)

The aim of this essay is to look at the shape of the Mediterranean region by adding to the perspective handed down by Mediterranean sedentary civilizations the peculiar perspective of the peoples of Maghrib with their nomadic legacy. From this point of view, we could observe some new perspective shapes of the Mediterranean “Plaza”, of its edges and systems of connections: the Mediterranean Sea was not a single basin, but a system of connected basins. Furthermore, by looking at the Medi- terranean history from the southern edge of the sea, at the beginning of the contemporary era a deep change in the regional system of networks has occurred, as a result of the fall of Saharan nomadic networks. The Maghribi historical perspective can open to us a very special pathway to the comprehension of the Mediterranean modernity, mainly because of its long tradition of nomadic-sedentary interrelation. The epoch-making challenges inherited from the collapse of nomadism in the recent past could be a strategic issue to understand the transformative nature of global mobility.