ABSTRACT
The chapter shows how the Paul Hazard concept of ‘crises of the European mind’ may be usefully employed as an umbrella term to explain and comprehend all the dynamics that affected the Mediterranean between the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The aim is to stress how European society of the period ambiguously developed new ways of approaching and representing what was considered culturally different. This preliminary enquiry provides an overview on the historiography and new perspectives in which the various historiographical categories could be analyzed, particularly stressing how Edward Said’s Orientalism is proved to be insufficient as a theoretical framework for the pre-modern European approaches to otherness. ‘East’ and ‘West,’ ‘Turks’ and ‘Franks’ are thus regarded as parts of the same Mediterranean ‘system,’ with the aim of stressing the connectivity of the Mediterranean space.
