The Mediterranean Overturned: Transnational North African Politics at the Intersection of Empire

FAIN: FT-285695-22

Christopher J. Rominger
University of North Florida (Jacksonville, FL 32224-7699)

Research and writing leading to a book that examines how North Africans, particularly Tunisians, negotiated transnational networks and forged new ties at a time when French, Italian, and Ottoman empires solidified national and racial boundaries in the early 20th century.

This project proposes two months of archival research at sites in Paris, France and Bologna, Italy to support the completion of a book manuscript situated at the crossroads of North African, Middle Eastern, and European history during the early twentieth century. “The Mediterranean Overturned” asks how, despite imperial and colonial conflicts that so often acted to solidify national, racial, and other boundaries, did transnational forms of political community in North Africa survive and even thrive? This case study, centered on Tunisia and its neighbors in the central Mediterranean, examines the emergence of transnational movements such as pan-Islam, communism, and Zionism, each of them compelling but overlooked alternatives to the liberal nationalism emphasized by past scholarship on North African history. Visual materials such as those produced by Jewish Tunisian photographer Albert Samama-Chikly help illuminate the intimate and human side of these complex transnational histories.