ABSTRACT
The attraction of comparing Mediterranean and Sahara derives of course not only from the applicability of nautical similes but from the adjacency of the two regions. By contrast, within Mediterranean studies ‘connectivity’ has become a way of characterising the ease of communications between one place and another in a much broader sense. The first comparative point to make is that there is no Mediterranean equivalent to this dominance of transport, and indeed of human mobility in general by one species—a species that is almost always, for obvious reasons of safety, moved about in groups. It is simply to suggest that the regime of connectivity as sketched for the Mediterranean in The Corrupting Sea has to be significantly modified to fit the Sahara. The Mediterranean of Horden and Purcell has arguably as the net introversion observed in historic times has been reversed through the power and infrastructure established by the nation-states that now govern the Mediterranean coast.
