Second International Conference on the Military History of the Mediterranean Sea, Thessaloniki, June 19– 20, 2020

The Mediterranean has attracted the imagination of modern historians as the epicentre of great political entities like the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, Venetians, and the Spanish and so on. Yet, it seems that the Sea was always on the margins of historical inquiry between monographs on the histories of Europe, the Middle-East and North Africa. That was until the publication of the famous 2-volume work by F. Braudel in 1949 that profoundly shaped the way of understanding of how societies living around the Mediterranean interacted in a single period of history, offering what another great historian has coined it “a horizontal history of the Mediterranean.” This conference aims to offer a rather vertical history of war in the Mediterranean from the early Middle Ages to the early Modern period (c. AD1700), putting the emphasis on the changing face of several of war’s aspects and contexts over time.

This international collaboration between scholars from Istanbul and Thessaloniki aspires to bring Thessaloniki to the forefront of academic attention, by organizing the Second International Conference on the Military History of the Mediterranean Sea, to be hosted at the Byzantine Museum of the Thessaloniki between 19-20 June 2020. We welcome papers that explore any topic related to the study and teaching of the military history of the Mediterranean from late Antiquity and the fall of Rome to the seventeenth century. We especially encourage papers that focus on the conference’s theme of ‘models of military leadership’.

Points of discussion could potentially, but not exclusively, include:

• Secular and ecclesiastical leadership
• Gender and authority
• The social strata of military leaders/commanders
• The role of military ideals and practices in shaping a military leader
• What could make or break a military leader
• The effectiveness of leaders/commanders in the battlefield
• The ‘ideal’ leadership and ‘heroic individualism’
• Divine authority

We would also consider proposals that target more general themes, like:

• Primary sources and their value for the military history of the Mediterranean Sea (c. 400-1700)
• The emergence and consolidation of customs of military obligation
• Strategy, tactics (battle and siege) and logistics in the regional operational theatres
• Naval warfare
• Society at war and the treatment of the defeated
• Evolution of weaponry in regional operational theatres